NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

MOBILEYE VISION TECHNOLOGIES LTD.,

Appellant

v.

IONROAD, LTD.,

Appellee

______________________ 

2017-1984

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 95/002,012.

______________________ 

Decided: June 12, 2018

______________________ 

 DARREN M. JIRON, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, 

Garrett & Dunner, LLP, Reston, VA, argued for appellant. Also represented by ANTHONY J. LOMBARDI, DANIEL 

C. TUCKER. 

 PAUL MICHAEL SCHOENHARD, McDermott, Will &

Emery LLP, Washington, DC, argued for appellee. Also 

represented by IAN BARNETT BROOKS, NICOLE JANTZI. 

______________________ 

Before LOURIE, CLEVENGER, and REYNA, Circuit Judges.
2 MOBILEYE VISION TECHNOLOGIES v. IONROAD, LTD. 

LOURIE, Circuit Judge. 

Mobileye Vision Technologies Ltd. (“Mobileye”) appeals from the final written decision of the United States 

Patent and Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal 

Board (“the Board”) in an inter partes reexamination 

affirming the examiner’s rejection of claims 1–7 of U.S. 

Patent 7,113,867 (“the ’867 patent”) as obvious. See 

iOnRoad, Ltd. v. Mobileye Techs. Ltd., No. 2015-7925, 

2016 WL 949027, at *8 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 11, 2016) (“Decision”). On appeal, Mobileye only challenges the Board’s 

decision with respect to claim 6. Because the Board did 

not err in its decision, we affirm. 

BACKGROUND

Mobileye owns the ’867 patent directed to a system for 

estimating a time-to-contact between a moving vehicle 

and an obstacle. See ’867 patent Abstract. The system 

accomplishes this by recording successive images and 

analyzing “the rate at which the separation between the 

vehicle and obstacle” is changing. Id. col. 7 ll. 37–46. For 

example, Figure 2B depicts a series of images starting at 

the top with three obstacles “,” “,” and “+” in the left, 

center, and right lanes of a roadway, respectively. See id.

fig. 2B. The obstacle “” in the center lane will collide 

with the vehicle located at the origin “0,” but obstacles 

“” and “+” in the left and right lanes will not. See id. col. 

8 ll. 5–27, fig. 2B. 
MOBILEYE VISION TECHNOLOGIES v. IONROAD, LTD. 3

Id. fig. 2B.

Notably, the lateral displacement, which is the distance between the obstacle and the origin along the Xcoordinate, of the obstacles in the left and right lanes will 

decrease initially, “but at some point the separations 

between” the vehicle “and the obstacles in the left and 

right lanes” will “again increase.” Id. col. 8 ll. 12–16, fig. 

2B. For the obstacle in the center lane, however, the 

lateral displacement will “uniformly approach zero,” 

where zero is the origin, indicating that the vehicle and 

obstacle will collide. Id. col. 8 ll. 16–21, fig. 2B. 

Claim 6 and the claims from which it depends read as 

follows: 
4 MOBILEYE VISION TECHNOLOGIES v. IONROAD, LTD. 

1. A time-to-contact estimate determination system for generating an estimate as to the timeto-contact of a vehicle moving along a roadway 

with an obstacle comprising: 

A. an image receiver configured to receive 

image information relating to a series 

of at least two images as the vehicle 

moves along a roadway; and characterized by

B. a processor configured to determine a 

scaling factor that defines a ratio between a dimension length associated 

with two features of the obstacle in a 

first one of the at least two images and 

the same length between the same two 

features of the obstacle in a second one 

of the at least two images and uses the 

ratio to generate a time-to-contact estimate of the vehicle with the obstacle.

4. A system according to claim 1 wherein the at 

least two images comprises more than two images.

5. A system according to claim 4 wherein the processor processes the image information to determine a lateral displacement of the object 

relative to a position of the vehicle.

6. A system according to claim 5 wherein the processor determines a likelihood of collision responsive to whether or not the lateral 

displacement substantially uniformly approaches zero. 

Id. col. 10 ll. 8–21, 30–39 (emphasis added).

iOnRoad, Ltd. (“iOnRoad”) filed a request for inter 

partes reexamination of the ’867 patent arguing, inter 
MOBILEYE VISION TECHNOLOGIES v. IONROAD, LTD. 5

alia, that claim 6 would have been obvious over (1) Neil 

D. Matthews, Visual Collision Avoidance, Advanced 

Systems Research Group, Dept. of Elecs. & Comput. Sci., 

Univ. of Southampton (1994) (“Matthews”), (2) David N. 

Lee et al., A theory of visual control of braking based on 

information about time-to collision, 5 Perception 437 

(1976) (“Lee”), and (3) U.S. Patent 4,257,703 (“Goodrich”). 

Mobileye only challenges the Board’s findings with respect to Goodrich. Goodrich teaches a collision avoidance 

system that uses the “lateral translation of the block” to 

predict “whether or not at its current lateral velocity, the 

block will clear or intersect [with] the vehicle.” Goodrich 

col. 5 ll. 4–9. 

The examiner rejected claim 6 as obvious over Matthews, Lee, and Goodrich. Mobileye appealed to the 

Board, and the Board affirmed the examiner’s rejection. 

See Decision, 2016 WL 949027, at *7. It determined that 

the combination of Matthews and Lee taught all of the 

limitations in claims 1, 4, and 5, and that Goodrich taught 

the “substantially uniformly approaches zero” limitation 

in claim 6. See id. at *5–7. It found that Goodrich used 

the lateral translation of an obstacle at a current lateral 

velocity to determine the point of intersection, which it 

reasoned was equivalent to determining when the lateral 

displacement “substantially uniformly approaches zero.” 

Id. at *7. Accordingly, the Board determined that the

combination of Matthews, Lee, and Goodrich rendered 

claim 6 obvious. Id.

Mobileye timely appealed the rejection of claim 6 to 

this court. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1295(a)(4)(A).

DISCUSSION

We review the Board’s legal determinations de novo, 

In re Elsner, 381 F.3d 1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir. 2004), and the 

Board’s factual findings underlying those determinations 

for substantial evidence, In re Gartside, 203 F.3d 1305, 
6 MOBILEYE VISION TECHNOLOGIES v. IONROAD, LTD. 

1316 (Fed. Cir. 2000). A finding is supported by substantial evidence if a reasonable mind might accept the evidence to support the finding. Consol. Edison Co. v. 

NLRB, 305 U.S. 197, 229 (1938). Obviousness is a question of law based on underlying factual findings, including 

“the scope and content of the prior art, differences between the prior art and the claims at issue, the level of 

ordinary skill in the pertinent art, and any objective 

indicia of non-obviousness.” Randall Mfg. v. Rea, 733 

F.3d 1355, 1362 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (citing KSR Int’l Co. v. 

Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 406 (2007)).

Only claim 6 is before us. Mobileye argues that the 

Board’s claim construction of the “substantially uniformly 

approaches zero” limitation to “merely mean[] that the 

obstacle is closing in on the vehicle, and that they will 

intersect,” see Decision, 2016 WL 949027, at *7 (internal 

quotation marks omitted), reads out the “substantially 

uniformly” part of the limitation. It further contends that 

the “substantially uniformly” language in the claim 

describes how the lateral displacement approaches zero, 

not just whether it approaches zero. Goodrich, as Mobileye characterizes it, does not base its collision determination on how the lateral displacement changes, because

it assumes a constant velocity. Mobileye argues that it 

therefore does not teach the “substantially uniformly” 

limitation in claim 6. Mobileye does not challenge the 

Board’s findings with respect to the other prior art references. 

iOnRoad responds that the Board expressly determined that Goodrich’s disclosure of a “lateral translation 

of the block . . . whether or not at its current lateral 

velocity, the block will clear or intersect [with] the vehicle” satisfies the “substantially uniformly approaches 

zero” limitation. This disclosure comes directly from 

Goodrich’s specification, see Goodrich col. 5 ll. 4–9, which, 

iOnRoad argues, is substantial evidence to support the 

Board’s finding. iOnRoad also counters that Mobileye 
MOBILEYE VISION TECHNOLOGIES v. IONROAD, LTD. 7

waived its claim construction argument because it raised

the issue for the first time in its rebuttal brief before the 

Board. 

We agree with iOnRoad that the Board’s finding that 

Goodrich teaches the “substantially uniformly approaches 

zero” limitation is supported by substantial evidence. 

Mobileye’s arguments depend on distinguishing claim 6 of 

the ’867 patent, which teaches estimating a time to collision using a lateral displacement, from Goodrich, which

teaches collision avoidance based on a lateral velocity. 

Compare ’867 patent col. 8 ll. 12–21, col. 10 ll. 36–39, with

Goodrich col. 5 ll. 4–9. However, that is a distinction 

without a difference. An object whose lateral displacement over time is substantially uniform means that at

each time interval, it moves approximately the same 

lateral distance. See ’867 patent fig. 2B. An object that 

moves the same lateral distance per time interval is 

moving at a constant lateral velocity. Cf. Oral Arg. at 

11:45–53, Mobileye Vision Techs., Ltd. v. iOnRoad, Ltd., 

No. 2017-1984 (Fed. Cir. May 2, 2018), http://

oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/default.aspx?fl=2017-

1984.mp3 (stating that there is general familiarity with 

the concept that “distance equals rate times time”). When 

the lateral distance between the obstacle and the vehicle

“approach[es] zero,” it will collide or intersect with the 

vehicle. See ’867 patent col. 8 ll. 18–21, fig. 2B; see also 

Decision, 2016 WL 949027, at *7.

Goodrich discloses this very situation: when monitoring a “lateral translation” of an obstacle at “its current 

lateral velocity,” the system can determine whether the 

obstacle “will clear or intersect [with] the vehicle.” See

Goodrich col. 5 ll. 4–9. Thus, substantial evidence supports the Board’s finding that “Goodrich expressly teaches” the limitation in claim 6. See Decision, 2016 WL 

949027, at *7.
8 MOBILEYE VISION TECHNOLOGIES v. IONROAD, LTD. 

At oral argument, Mobileye argued that a key feature

of the ’867 patent is that it exclusively relies on the lateral displacement to estimate the time of contact, which is 

not directly related to the velocity of the obstacle. See

Oral Arg. at 11:55–12:33. This feature makes a difference, Mobileye contended, because an object could be 

moving at a constant velocity, but the changes in its 

lateral displacement with respect to the vehicle could still 

decrease or increase in a non-constant manner. See id.; 

see also ’867 patent fig. 2B. But Goodrich’s collision 

avoidance system does not depend on a constant velocity;

it depends on a constant “lateral velocity.” Goodrich col. 5 

l. 6 (emphasis added). Therefore, the record does not

support Mobileye’s attempt to distinguish the prior art. 

Accordingly, the Board’s finding that Goodrich discloses the “substantially uniformly approaches zero” 

limitation is supported by substantial evidence, and the 

Board properly concluded that claim 6 would have been 

obvious over Matthews, Lee, and Goodrich. 

We have considered Mobileye’s remaining arguments, 

but find them unpersuasive.

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of 

the Board.

AFFIRMED