Source: http://www.reexamlink.com/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 22:17:07+00:00

Document:
In DSS Technology Management v. Apple Inc., a split panel of the Federal Circuit reversed a finding of patentability by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or the Board), but did so without remanding the case back to the Board for further findings.
In DSS, the Federal Circuit considered two inter partes review decisions finding claims of a patent owned by DSS unpatentable for obviousness. (Apple Inc. v. DSS Tech. Mgmt., Inc., No. IPR2015-00369 (P.T.A.B. June 17, 2016) (Apple I); Apple Inc. v. DSS Tech. Mgmt., Inc., No. IPR2015-00373, (P.T.A.B. June 17, 2016) (Apple II)). The panel majority (J. O’Malley and J. Reyna) felt the Board’s decision lacked sufficient explanation and that none could be found in the record.
said server and peripheral transmitters being energized in low duty cycle RF bursts at intervals determined by a code sequence which is timed in relation to said synchronizing information.
To institute the resulting IPRs, the Board relied on two pieces of prior art in the IPR: U.S. Patent No. 5,241,542 to Natarajan et al. (“Natarajan”), and U.S. Patent No. 4,887,266 to Neve et al. (“Neve”). In its final written decisions, the Board found that the combination of these references rendered obvious all of the challenged claims of the ’290 patent. Natarajan was relied upon for its power conservative wireless communications with portable units. It provided time slots when the mobile units could turn communications off because it was outside its appointed time slot for receiving and transmitting data.
The Board found “no persuasive evidence of record that it would have been ‘uniquely challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art’ to do so.” Id. (quoting Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc.). The Board noted that, “as the [Supreme] Court explained in KSR, the skilled artisan is ‘a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton.’” (quoting KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc.). It ultimately found claims 1-2 and 9-10 obvious over Natarajan in view of of Neve, and DSS appealed.
The sole issue on appeal is the Board’s finding that it would have been obvious to modify the base station transmitter in Natarajan to be “energized in low duty cycle RF bursts,” as required by the claims of the ’290 patent.
First, common sense is typically invoked to provide a known motivation to combine, not to supply a missing claim limitation. (citing Arendi S.A.R.L. v. Apple Inc., 832 F.3d 1355, 1361 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
Second, we have invoked common sense to fill in a missing limitation only when “the limitation in question was unusually simple and the technology particularly straightforward.” Id. at 1362 (citing Perfect Web Techs., Inc. v. InfoUSA, Inc., 587 F.3d 1324, 1328 (Fed. Cir. 2009).
Third, the cases “repeatedly warn that references to ‘common sense’—whether to supply a motivation to combine or a missing limitation—cannot be used as a wholesale substitute for reasoned analysis and evidentiary support, especially when dealing with a limitation missing from the prior art references specified.” Id.
The majority analogized the Board’s reference to “ordinary creativity” to the “common sense” considered in Arendi, and that calls for a “searching” inquiry. The majority observed that the limitation at issue is not “unusually simple” and the technology is not “particularly straightforward.” It relates to a complex communications protocol that enables the claimed low duty cycle mode of operation. The majority felt that the ’290 patent contemplated a server that was itself a mobile device and was stated itself to have an “extremely low power consumption” and that the pulsed mode of operation was critical to achieving this goal. Therefore, the majority found that the Board did not meet the standard set forth in Arendi.
The full extent of the Board’s analysis is contained in a single paragraph. . . . After acknowledging that Natarajan does not disclose a base unit transmitter that uses the same power conservation technique, the Board concluded that a person of ordinary skill would have been motivated to modify Natarajan to incorporate such a technique into a base unit transmitter and that such a modification would have been within the skill of the ordinarily skilled artisan. . . . In reaching these conclusions, the Board made no further citation to the record. . . . It referred instead to the “ordinary creativity” of the skilled artisan. Id. (quoting KSR, 550 U.S. at 420–21). This is not enough to satisfy the Arendi standard.
To the extent the Board’s obviousness findings were based on Dr. Hu’s testimony—which is questionable, because the Board never cited her testimony directly—her “conclusory statements and unspecific expert testimony” are insufficient to support the Board’s findings.
We also find “that this is not a case where a more reasoned explanation than that provided by the Board can be gleaned from the record.” Id. Dr. Hu’s testimony suffers from the serious deficiencies that we have discussed above, and Apple suggests no other evidence that might remedy those defects. Apple failed to meet its burden of establishing that the challenged claims of the ’290 patent were obvious. We therefore reverse the Board’s finding of unpatentability.
Judge Newman disagreed with the majority, stating that the proper decision was to remand for further explanation or “to decide the question of law” (presumably, obviousness). She asserted that the majority decision did neither. Judge Newman opined that the Board adequately explained its decision of unpatentability, and went into great detail to document the findings of the Board. She found the testimony of Dr. Hu, which the majority characterized as “conclusory” and “unspecific” as instead “directly on the point for which it was cited.” She also faulted the majority for not discussing or reviewing the evidence cited by the PTAB in its decision. Finally, Judge Newman explained that reversal is not a proper remedy for an inadequate explanation in the Board’s final written decision.
This case is valuable to show the depth of review that arises from IPR proceedings at the Board and Federal Circuit. It also provides valuable insight as to how the Federal Circuit interprets the use of “common sense” obviousness assertions in IPRs, post-KSR. It also raises discussion about the ramifications of an undeveloped record on appeal.
A recent Federal Circuit case demonstrates the complexity of resolving difficult claim construction issues in multiple agency and court proceedings. In Knowles Electronics v. Cirrus Logic the Federal Circuit declined to apply its own prior claim interpretation of the same term of the same claims of the same patent.
U.S. Patent No. 6,781,231 (“the ’231 patent”) entitled “Microelectromechanical System Package with Environmental and Interference Shield,” was issued to Knowles Electronics, LLC (“Knowles”) in 2004. The ’231 patent discloses microelectromechanical system (“MEMS”) packages comprising a substrate, a microphone, and a cover accommodating the microphone. The MEMS packages shield the microphone from an interference signal or an environmental condition, and improve over the prior art’s drawbacks associated with manufacturing these housings, such as lead time, cost, and tooling.
a housing formed by connecting the peripheral edge portion of the cover to the substrate, the center portion of the cover spaced from the surface of the substrate to accommodate the microelectromechanical system microphone, the housing including an acoustic port for allowing an acoustic signal to reach the microelectromechanical system microphone wherein the housing provides protection from an interference signal.
Three inter partes reexaminations were filed by Cirrus Logic, Inc. (“Cirrus”) against the ’231 patent and were later merged. (U.S. Control. Nos. 95/000,509, 95/001,251, and 95/001,363). Ultimately claims 1-4 and 23-27 were reexamined and rejected based on anticipation in view of van Halteren (WO 01/414497 A1) and for lack of written description. Knowles appealed the rejections to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB).
On appeal to the PTAB, different claim construction arguments were proffered by Knowles, including one that the PTAB should adopt an interpretation of “package” in the preamble based on a prior decision in an International Trade Commission (ITC) proceeding which was considered and upheld by the Federal Circuit in MEMS Tech. Berhad v. Int’l Trade Comm’n, 447 F. App’x 142 (Fed. Cir. 2011). Under this definition, Knowles maintained, van Halteren would not anticipate the claims.
But the PTAB declined to apply the Federal Circuit’s prior decision construing the same term of the same claims of the same patent, concluding that the Board was not bound by the district court’s claim constructions. PTAB Op. *12 (citing In re Trans Tex. Holdings Corp., 498 F.3d 1290, 1301 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (“We conclude that the Board was not bound by the district court’s claim construction. . . .”)). The PTAB affirmed the examiner and upheld the rejections.
In MEMS Technology, we upheld the International Trade Commission’s construction of the term “package” in the ’231 patent’s preamble to mean “a self-contained unit that has two levels of connection, to the device and to a circuit (or other system).” 447 F .App’x at 159; see id. (affirming the ITC’s rejection of an anticipation claim because the disputed prior art “does not disclose first and second levels of electrical connection”).
Thus, the claim construction in MEMS Technology did not require that a package be mounted via surface or through-hole mounts, such that even if we were to look to MEMS Technology, we would find no inconsistency with the PTAB’s construction of the claim term “package” here.
Consequently, the panel majority affirmed the PTAB’s decision on unpatentability.
I write in concern for perpetuation of the erroneous position that the PTAB need not apply the prior final judicial decision of the same issue of the same claims of the same patent.  This error not only produces an incorrect result in this case, but will further impart uncertainty to proceedings under the America Invents Act. The purpose whereby the PTAB was created as an agency tribunal, in order to provide stable law and economical determination of patent validity, is negated when final adjudication in a court of last resort may be ignored, and the issue litigated afresh in the agency tribunal.
However, the PTAB stated that “precedent makes clear that the USPTO is not bound in reexamination proceedings by claim constructions produced by a court.” PTAB Op. *12. While precedent has previously addressed the effect of a prior district court claim construction on a subsequent PTO proceeding, never before has a final claim construction by this court been held not to be preclusive.
Here the claim construction was decided by the Federal Circuit, as a matter of law, in MEMS Technology Berhad v. International Trade Commission, 447 F. App’x 142 (Fed. Cir. 2011). No equitable or due process exception to issue preclusion is here asserted; thus preclusion should apply. The majority declines to discuss this question, which is presented on this appeal. By this silence, my colleagues are reinforcing this incorrect position. I respectfully dissent.
Judge Newman observed that the majority based its decision partly on the Power Integrations case. She distinguished the instant case (involving a decision from the Federal Circuit) from Power Integrations, because Power Integrations involved only a district court decision, thereby allowing the Board not to be bound to a district court claim construction.
These decisions are complex because there are two claim construction standards at play (BRI v. the narrower Phillips district court construction), different deciding bodies (PTO, district court, PTAB, ITC, and Federal Circuit), and different proceedings (district court trial, appellate review, ex parte examination, ex parte reexamination, inter partes reexamination, inter partes review, ex parte and inter partes appeals). With these differences there are no easy analyses and distinct and definitive lines of issue preclusion are hard to draw.
Other universities caught wind of the Covidien decision and invoked their own sovereign immunity defenses to attempt to avoid IPRs of their patents. For example, the University of Minnesota asserted the sovereign immunity defense in its IPR battle with Ericsson. Ericsson v. Regents of the University of Minnesota, IPR2017-01186, -01197, -01200, -01213, -01214, and -01219.
The University of Minnesota filed a motion to dismiss the Ericsson IPRs based on sovereign immunity. Ericsson opposed the motion, but did not dispute that the University could claim sovereign immunity as a state entity. Ericsson and the University had a basic difference of opinion about whether sovereign immunity could be a valid defense in IPRs.
We agree with Petitioner [Ericsson] that the filing of an action in federal court alleging infringement effectively waives Patent Owner’s Eleventh Amendment immunity defense.
The majority of the Board denied the University’s motion to dismiss the IPRs based on sovereign immunity because the University had filed suit in district court, waiving its sovereign immunity defense.
A concurring opinion was authored by Judge Jennifer S. Bisk, where she concluded that sovereign immunity was not a defense for use in IPRs based on the differences between IPRs and district court proceedings. Therefore she reached the same end result that sovereign immunity does not apply here, but for different reasons.
With this ruling the University of Minnesota will be back to work on these IPR proceedings unless it can find a way to request interlocutory relief from this decision.
The slides of the October Boardside Chat can be found here.
The PTAB wants each petitioner to explain why it filed a subsequent IPR petition, and will be especially careful about petitions filed after a decision on institution. (See the informative decisions, above.) This is to avoid the situation where a petitioner uses a first petition as a “roadmap” to make a subsequent petition filing.
requirement under 35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11) to issue a final determination not later than 1 year after the date on which the Director notices institution of review.
Judge Ruschke invited stakeholders to provide feedback and further questions for any other statistical information that might be of use for the patent bar to advise its clients. It was clear from the tenor of the discussion that the PTAB wanted to set the record straight on serial IPR petition practice, and to quell some the concerns raised by certain commentators about heavy-handed post-grant proceedings using multiple IPR petitions.
If you are interested in knowing more about amendments in IPR proceedings and the practical impact of the Federal Circuit’s en banc Aqua Products decision, click here to view a brief 10 minute presentation.
On October 4, 2017, the Federal Circuit issued a lengthy decision in Aqua Products v. Matal, spanning five opinions and 148 pages, which addressed the proper allocation of the burden of proof when amended claims are offered during inter partes review proceedings (“IPRs”). Aqua Prods. v. Matal, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 19293.
The case concerns U.S. Patent No. 8,273,183, relating to a self-propelled cleaning apparatus for cleaning a submerged surface of a pool or tank, assigned to Aqua Products, Inc, (“Aqua”). In the underlying IPR proceeding (IPR2013-00159), the Board denied Aqua’s motion to amend various claims of the ’183 patent. The PTAB had followed its prior practice for deciding motions to amend, which placed a substantive burden of proving patentability on the patent owner. MasterImage 3D, Inc. v. RealD Inc., No. IPR2015–00040, at *2–4 (P.T.A.B. July 15, 2015) (clarifying Idle Free Sys., Inc. v. Bergstrom, Inc., No. IPR2012–00027, at *4 (P.T.A.B. June 11, 2013)). Aqua appealed the final written decision of the Board and a panel of the Federal Circuit concluded that the Board did not abuse its discretion in denying Aqua’s amendments. Aqua requested en banc rehearing, which was granted and the court vacated the panel decision.
Upon en banc rehearing the case, the court interpreted 35 U.S.C. § 316(e) as placing the burden to prove all propositions of claim unpatentability on the petitioner, including amended claims. To the extent they are inconsistent with its decision in Aqua Products, the court overruled its prior decisions in Microsoft Corp. v. Proxyconn, Inc., 789 F.3d 1292 (Fed. Cir. 2015); Prolitec, Inc. v. ScentAir Techs., Inc., 807 F.3d 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2015), petition for reh’g pending; Synopsys, Inc. v. Mentor Graphics Corp., 814 F.3d 1309 (Fed. Cir. 2016); and Nike, Inc. v. Adidas AG, 812 F.3d 1326 (Fed. Cir. 2016). The court vacated the final written decision of the Board insofar as it denied the patent owner’s motion to amend the patent, and remanded it for the Board to issue a final decision under § 318(a) assessing the patentability of the proposed substitute claims without placing the burden of persuasion on the patent owner.
“If a settlement occurs and the IPR is terminated, no certificate incorporating the amendment into the patent ever issues. Section 318(b) makes clear that no certificate either reaffirming a challenged claim or substituting an amended claim for a challenged one issues unless and until the Board chooses to issue a final judgment under § 318(a) in which it assesses the patentability of both categories of claims. . . .
The final sentence of § 317(a) gives the Board the option to proceed to final judgment in any proceeding where the original petitioners choose not to continue their challenge. The Board might do this for any number of reasons. . . .
The court’s inquiry about whether the Board may sua sponte raise patentability challenges to the amended claims was “reserved for another day,” but the court did reiterate the panel decision that the Board may base its patentability determinations of amended claims on the entire record before it, and not limit itself solely on the face of the motion to amend. (Pages 60-62.) The court noted the Board’s decision to reject Aqua’s proposed amended claims without consideration of the entirety of the IPR record as an independent basis for vacating and remanding the matter to the Board.
Patent owners and petitioners routinely argued issues of patentability of proposed claim amendments prior to Aqua Products. However, Aqua Products shifted the analysis from whether the patent owner proved patentability, to whether the petitioner demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence that an amended claim is unpatentable. Post Aqua Products, petitioners must assume that a motion to amend claims will get more of the Board’s attention, and the petitioner will bear more responsibility to make a full and convincing record of unpatentability of amended claims. If it turns out that the Board grants more motions to amend post Aqua Products, petitioners will have to more carefully consider the availability of narrowing amendments that the patent owner could assert before recommending an IPR petition strategy. Similarly, patent owners will have to decide if the guidance provided by Aqua Products will merit more frequent filing of motions to amend or if it is preferable to procure amended claims via reissue or continuation practice.
When a patent undergoes review at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”), the Patent Owner has an opportunity to file a motion to amend claims so that a substitute claim can be proposed for each claim sought to be amended. Stakeholders, and even some jurists, have been critical of the PTAB for denying the majority of motions to amend, but every once in a while one is granted by the PTAB.
In Amerigen Pharmaceuticals Limited. v. Shire LLC (IPR2015-2009), the PTAB granted Shire’s motion to cancel all the claims instituted for trial, with the exception of a single claim that was amended from being multiply dependent on claims that were instituted for trial and claims not instituted for trial to merely being dependent on claims not instituted for trial.
salt in (a) and (b) comprises mixed amphetamine salts.
The proposed amendment cancels all instituted claims and proposes one substitute claim that cancels claim 25 as instituted, to the extent it depends from instituted claims. The amendments respond to the grounds asserted for unpatentability (37 C.F.R. § 1.121(a)(2)(i)) and they do not enlarge the scope of the claims or introduce new subject matter (37 C.F.R. § 1.121(a)(2)(i)).
Shire did not cite another IPR (IPR2016-01033) relating to claims 2 and 13 [however, these claims were ultimately not instituted for trial in that IPR either].
In this instance, however, multiple dependent substitute claim 26 merely has the effect of eliminating three claims dependent on instituted claims 18–20, and preserving two claims dependent from non-instituted claims 2 and 13. As Patent Owner aptly explains, “[e]ffectively, no claim is being amended, and claims are only being cancelled, because claims 18–24 are being removed, and proposed claim 26 removes three multiple dependent claims (claim 25 as it depends from claims 18–20)” and “[n]o other changes to the claims are being made.” Paper 14, 2.
With the cancellation of claims 18–25, and the entry of substitute claim 26, there would be no claim remaining subject to inter partes review in this proceeding. We agree with Patent Owner that “[t]here is no requirement for Shire to prove, after the Institution Decision, that original non-amended claims are patentable over all potential prior art, especially non-instituted claims.” Paper 21, 4.
Thus, Shire was able to convert claim 25 that was multiply dependent on claims that were in the trial and claims not in the trial, to new claim 26 that is multiply dependent on claims not in the trial, without proof of patentability because no new feature was added to the amended claim.
Could the same result have been accomplished more simply, such as with a motion for adverse judgment? To do that, Shire would have had to cancel claim 25 and lose the subject matter of what amounted to claim 26. This is one complication associated with partial institution and multiple dependent claims. The instant decision provides guidance about how to make amendments that will cancel subject matter in claims instituted for trial, and yet salvage claimed subject matter not involved in the institution of inter partes review.
ChanBond sued several cable company defendants alleging patent infringement of three wideband signal distribution system patents in the District of Delaware in 2015. The defendants included Atlantic Broadband Group, Bright House Networks, Cable One, Cablevision, Cequel Communications, Charter Communications, Comcast Communications, Cox Communications, Mediacom Communications, RCN Telecom Services, Time Warner Cable, WaveDivision Holdings, and Wideopen West Finance (District of Delaware case nos. 15-cv-842 to -854). Non-party Cisco filed eight IPR petitions against the three ChanBond patents in September 2016, and a stay was ordered on March 3, 2017 pending the PTAB’s decisions to institute IPR.
On March 29, 2017, six IPR petitions for US Patent Nos. 8,341,679 and 8,984,565 were denied institution. The denial was based on a difference in opinion about the broadest reasonable interpretation for the term “RF channel,” which affected every claim Cisco sought to have reviewed. (For brevity, only the documents relating to IPR2016-01898 will be referenced in the following discussion, since the other 5 IPR petitions were denied on substantially identical grounds in the remaining five proceedings: IPR2016-01899, -01900, -01889, -01890, and -01891).
Cisco took the position that “RF channel” encompasses not only radio transmissions in different frequency bands, but also radio transmissions that can be in the same frequency band that use a code multiplex to encode the transmission into different “channels.” Cisco proposed a construction for “RF channel” that “includes ‘an RF path for transmitting electric signals.'” (Petition at 13, citing the ‘679 patent at 6:62-65.) Cisco’s prior art was also directed to Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems which rely on spread spectrum (“a wideband channel,” as stated in Ex. 1002, ¶ 58) as opposed to different transmission bands.
The PTAB concluded that the term “RF channel” as used in the ‘679 patent “does not include code channels – for example data streams created by CDMA– but instead refers only to frequency bands, such as those created by FDMA.” (Final Written Decision of IPR2016-01898, p. 13.) All six of the IPR petitions of the ‘679 and ‘565 patents were denied based on the claim construction issue and because Cisco’s grounds were based CDMA prior art.
It appears that the one year window after service to file IPRs has passed, so it will be interesting to see if a request for rehearing is filed by Cisco to challenge the panel’s decision. It is not clear if the interpretations proffered by the panel will somehow pose issues for ChanBond to enforce its patents as planned, but it has at least avoided further review of the ‘679 and ‘565 patents for now.
Looking for a holistic view of best practices and strategies for patent procurement and enforcement? You are invited to attend a free, two-part webinar on best patent practices. Click this link to register. I will be co-presenting with Christopher Larus of Robins Kaplan to offer best practices for patent generation and patent enforcement. Each webinar is one hour long and we will apply for CLE credits for registered attendees. The webinars are set for February 22 and March 29. Please join us!

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