Court Opinion

ID: 9406210
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-06-30 14:00:54.113485+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:28.085650
License: Public Domain

Case: 21-1960   Document: 61     Page: 1   Filed: 06/30/2023

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                 ______________________

           PRISUA ENGINEERING CORP.,
                    Appellant

                            v.

     SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.,
                  Appellee

  KATHERINE K. VIDAL, UNDER SECRETARY OF
  COMMERCE FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
    AND DIRECTOR OF THE UNITED STATES
      PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE,
                  Intervenor
            ______________________

                       2021-1960
                 ______________________

     Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark
 Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. IPR2017-
 01188.
                  ______________________

                 Decided: June 30, 2023
                 ______________________

    JOHN C. CAREY, Carey Rodriguez Milian Gonya, LLP,
 Miami, FL, argued for appellant. Also represented by
 NICHOLAS J. DOYLE.
Case: 21-1960     Document: 61     Page: 2    Filed: 06/30/2023

 2                              PRISUA ENGINEERING CORP. v.
                          SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.

     RICHARD L. RAINEY, Covington & Burling LLP, Wash-
 ington, DC, argued for appellee. Also represented by
 BRADLEY KEITH ERVIN, ROBERT JASON FOWLER.

     MARY L. KELLY, Office of the Solicitor, United States
 Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA, for interve-
 nor. Also represented by PETER J. AYERS, SARAH E.
 CRAVEN, THOMAS W. KRAUSE, FARHEENA YASMEEN
 RASHEED.
             ______________________

      Before DYK, BRYSON, and STARK, Circuit Judges.
 STARK, Circuit Judge.
     Prisua Engineering Corp. (“Prisua”) appeals a decision
 of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) concluding
 that claims 1-4 and 8 of U.S. Patent No. 8,650,591 (“’591
 patent”) are unpatentable as obvious. Because substantial
 evidence supports the Board’s findings, we affirm.
                               I
     The ’591 patent, titled “Video Enabled Digital Devices
 for Embedding User Data in Interactive Applications,”
 teaches apparatuses and methods that enable substituting
 a part of one video as a part of another video. For example,
 the technology could allow a user to substitute her own face
 for a character’s or actor’s face in a video game or movie.
     Claims 1-4 and 8 of the ’591 patent are at issue on
 appeal. Claim 1, an apparatus claim from which claims 2-
 4 and 8 depend, is illustrative of the challenged claims and
 recites:
     An interactive media apparatus for generating a
     displayable edited video data stream from an orig-
     inal video data stream, wherein at least one pixel
     in a frame of said original video data stream is dig-
     itally extracted to form a first image, said first im-
     age then replaced by a second image resulting from
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 PRISUA ENGINEERING CORP. v.                                  3
 SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.

    a digital extraction of at least one pixel in a frame
    of a user input video data stream, said apparatus
    comprising:
        an image capture device capturing the user
        input video data stream;
        an image display device displaying the orig-
        inal video stream;
        a data entry device, operably coupled with
        the image capture device and the image dis-
        play device, operated by a user to select the
        at least one pixel in the frame of the user in-
        put video data stream to use as the second
        image, and further operated by the user to
        select the at least one pixel to use as the first
        image;
        wherein said data entry device is selected
        from a group of devices consisting of: a key-
        board, a display, a wireless communication
        capability device, and an external memory
        device;
        a digital processing unit operably coupled
        with the data entry device, said digital pro-
        cessing unit performing:
        identifying the selected at least one pixel in
        the frame of the user input video data
        stream;
        extracting the identified at least one pixel
        as the second image;
        storing the second image in a memory de-
        vice operably coupled with the interactive
        media apparatus;
        receiving a selection of the first image from
        the original video data stream;
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 4                             PRISUA ENGINEERING CORP. v.
                         SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.

         extracting the first image;
         spatially matching an area of the second
         image to an area of the first image in the
         original video data stream, wherein spa-
         tially matching the areas results in equal
         spatial lengths and widths between said
         two spatially matched areas; and
         performing a substitution of the spatially
         matched first image with the spatially
         matched second image to generate the dis-
         playable edited video data stream from the
         original video data stream.
 ’591 patent 7:14-54 (emphasis added). The two emphasized
 limitations are referred to as the “image display device lim-
 itation” and the “data entry device limitation” respectively.
 Both are at issue in this appeal.
      After Prisua sued Samsung Electronics America, Inc.
 (“Samsung”) for infringing the ’591 patent, Samsung peti-
 tioned the Board for inter partes review of claims 1-4, 8,
 and 11. See Samsung Elecs. Am., Inc. v. Prisua Eng’g
 Corp., 948 F.3d 1342, 1349-50 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (explaining
 initial procedural history of this case). Samsung’s grounds
 for unpatentability were based on, as relevant here, Patent
 Application Publication No. 2005/0151743 (“Sitrick”) and,
 alternatively, U.S. Patent No. 7,460,731 (“Senftner”). 1

     1  Samsung’s grounds for obviousness for claims 3
 and 4 relied on a combination of Sitrick, or alternatively,
 Senftner, with a third prior art reference. Because the is-
 sues presented in this appeal relate only to Sitrick and/or
 Senftner, for simplicity we refer just to these two refer-
 ences. Our discussion of the obviousness grounds based on
 those two references applies equally to the combination
 grounds with which Samsung challenges claims 3 and 4.
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 SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.

     Sitrick teaches “a system and method for processing a
 video input signal providing for tracking a selected portion
 in a predefined audiovisual presentation and integrating
 selected user images into the selected portion of the prede-
 fined audiovisual presentation.” J.A. 1970. Figure 1 of Sit-
 rick is a “diagram of the [Sitrick] invention”:

 J.A. 1971, 1980. As depicted in the figure, Sitrick teaches
 incorporating “a user specified image” (137) from image
 data (135) into an original video (120) to produce an output
 video (190) in which the user specified image replaces a
 portion of the original video (123). 2 J.A. 1980 (Sitrick ¶ 31).
 Senftner similarly teaches processes and devices for “cre-
 ating personalized videos through partial image replace-
 ment.” J.A. 1953 (Senftner 1:36-37).
     The Board instituted inter partes review and found
 claim 11 obvious in light of Sitrick. The Board further de-
 termined it could not assess the obviousness of claims 1-4
 and 8 because they were indefinite under IPXL Holdings,

     2  We follow the terminology of Sitrick and, when dis-
 cussing the reference, refer to the original source and the
 output as “videos” but refer to the replacement source as
 an “image.” The parties do not suggest this difference is
 material.
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 6                             PRISUA ENGINEERING CORP. v.
                         SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.

 L.L.C. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 430 F.3d 1377 (Fed. Cir. 2005).
 See Samsung, 948 F.3d at 1350. Both parties appealed.
     On appeal, we affirmed the Board’s holding that claim
 11 was invalid. Id. at 1355-59. 3 We further held that
 IPXL-type indefiniteness does not preclude the Board from
 addressing patentability on obviousness (or anticipation)
 grounds. See id. at 1355. Accordingly, we remanded for
 the Board to reconsider the validity of claims 1-4 and 8. On
 remand, the Board found that claims 1-4 and 8 were un-
 patentable as obvious over Sitrick and, alternatively, that
 claims 1, 3-4, and 8 (but not claim 2) were unpatentable as
 obvious over Senftner.
     Prisua timely appealed. 4
                              II
      A patent is obvious “if the differences between the sub-
 ject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such
 that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious
 at the time the invention was made to a person having or-
 dinary skill in the art.” 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) (2011). 5 “Obvi-
 ousness is a legal question based on underlying findings of
 fact.” Fleming v. Cirrus Design Corp., 28 F.4th 1214, 1221

     3   Claim 11, unlike the claims now before us, is a
 method claim. Claim 11 also does not contain the image
 display device limitation of the claims we are reviewing
 now and has a variation of the data entry device limitation.

     4   The Board had jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
 § 316(c).     We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.
 § 1295(a)(4)(A) and 35 U.S.C. §§ 141(c), 319.
     5    The ’591 patent has an effective filing date of
 March 9, 2010. Therefore, the version of § 103 that existed
 prior to the enactment of the Leahy-Smith America Invents
 Act governs. See 35 U.S.C. § 100 note.
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 PRISUA ENGINEERING CORP. v.                                7
 SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.

 (Fed. Cir. 2022). Among those underlying issues of fact is
 what the prior art reference discloses to an ordinarily
 skilled artisan. See id.
     We review the Board’s legal determinations de novo
 and its factual findings for substantial evidence. See Almi-
 rall, LLC v. Amneal Pharms. LLC, 28 F.4th 265, 271 (Fed.
 Cir. 2022). Substantial evidence is “such relevant evidence
 as a reasonable mind might accept as adequate to support
 a conclusion.” Consol. Edison Co. of N.Y. v. NLRB, 305
 U.S. 197, 229 (1938). “[T]he possibility of drawing two in-
 consistent conclusions from the evidence does not prevent
 an administrative agency’s finding from being supported
 by substantial evidence.” Consolo v. Fed. Mar. Comm’n,
 383 U.S. 607, 620 (1966). Indeed, to the contrary, we have
 described such a situation as “the epitome of a decision that
 must be sustained upon review for substantial evidence.”
 Elbit Sys. of Am., LLC v. Thales Visionix, Inc., 881 F.3d
 1354, 1356 (Fed. Cir. 2018) (internal quotation marks and
 citation omitted). We “defer to the Board’s findings con-
 cerning the credibility of expert witnesses.” Yorkey v. Diab,
 601 F.3d 1279, 1284 (Fed. Cir. 2010).
                              III
     Prisua identifies two purported errors in the Board’s
 analysis of claim 1. 6 First, Prisua argues that neither Sit-
 rick nor Senftner discloses the image display device limita-
 tion. Second, Prisua contends that neither reference
 discloses the data entry device limitation. We find sub-
 stantial evidence supports the Board’s conclusion that Sit-
 rick discloses both of these limitations. Therefore, we do

     6   Prisua presses no separate arguments with respect
 to dependent claims 2-4 and 8. Therefore, our analysis of
 claim 1 applies equally to the other claims, and no other
 issues need to be addressed.
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 8                              PRISUA ENGINEERING CORP. v.
                          SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.

 not reach the issue of whether these limitations are also
 present in Senftner.
                               A
     We start with the image display device limitation. Ac-
 cording to Prisua, Sitrick does not suggest that the original
 image is displayed on an image display device. In Prisua’s
 view, Sitrick’s Figure 1 can only be reasonably understood
 as representing an undisplayed data manipulation process;
 it does not, Prisua asserts, depict a physical device. We
 disagree, as the Board’s contrary finding is supported by
 substantial evidence.
       Samsung’s expert, Dr. Edward Delp, testified that a
 person of ordinary skill in the art would understand Sit-
 rick’s Figure 1 as including actual displays in its illustra-
 tion. The Board was free to credit Dr. Delp over Prisua’s
 expert, Dr. Yolanda Prieto (who is also the ’591 patent’s in-
 ventor), and we have no basis to question its decision to do
 so. See Yorkey, 601 F.3d at 1284. Sitrick explains that in
 Figure 1 “representations of two people . . . are visible in
 . . . program video 120,” i.e., in the original video stream.
 J.A. 1980 (emphasis added). A reasonable mind – after
 considering the competing experts’ testimony, choosing to
 credit that of Dr. Delp, and evaluating the record from the
 perspective of an ordinarily skilled artisan – could conclude
 that if the contents of the original video stream are “visible”
 in Figure 1 then the original video stream must be dis-
 played and, therefore, Sitrick discloses “an image display
 device displaying the original video stream.” Accordingly,
 substantial evidence supports the Board’s findings with re-
 spect to the image display device limitation.
                               B
     We now turn to the data entry device limitation.
 Prisua argues that this limitation requires “a specific kind
 of data entry device: one that is . . . operated by the user to
 select at least one pixel from the original video stream.”
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 PRISUA ENGINEERING CORP. v.                                  9
 SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.

 Prisua’s Br. 26, 29. Prisua further contends that the Board
 erred because it found only that Sitrick discloses a data en-
 try device in which the user selects at least one pixel from
 the replacement image, not from the original video, and
 this finding does not demonstrate obviousness. See id. (cit-
 ing J.A. 31-32). 7
     We acknowledge that the Board’s analysis on this issue
 consisted only of an explanation of why Sitrick discloses
 user selection of at least one pixel from the replacement
 image; it could have more clearly addressed whether Sit-
 rick discloses the user selecting at least one pixel from the
 original video stream. See J.A. 31-32. However, the
 Board’s approach to this issue is the understandable con-
 sequence of Prisua’s argumentation. Prisua argued to the
 Board that “Sitrick does not disclose that a user operates
 Sitrick’s computer to ‘select the at least one pixel.’” J.A.
 836. Prisua did not argue to the Board that there was any
 meaningful difference between the user selecting “at least
 one pixel” in the original video and selecting “at least one
 pixel” in the replacement image, and it never asserted to
 the Board that Sitrick fails to teach the selection of at least
 one pixel in the original video. Hence, when the Board ex-
 plained that Sitrick discloses user selection of at least one
 pixel from an image for use in the resulting video, it fully
 resolved the dispute presented to it. Notwithstanding
 Prisua’s belated arguments to us, which are presented with

     7   Prisua additionally argues that because (in its
 view) Sitrick does not teach the image display device it also
 does not teach the data entry device limitation, as the data
 entry device must be “operably coupled with . . . the image
 display device.” Because we are affirming the Board’s con-
 clusion that Sitrick discloses the image display device,
 Prisua’s contention lacks merit.
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 10                             PRISUA ENGINEERING CORP. v.
                          SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.

 much greater specificity and clarity, the Board had no rea-
 son to believe its findings as to Sitrick were incomplete.
     In addition, any error by the Board in this regard is
 harmless, as unappealed findings of the Board entail the
 conclusion that Sitrick teaches the user selecting at least
 one pixel from the original video. See In re Watts, 354 F.3d
 1362, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (applying harmless error rule
 to Board); Munoz v. Strahm Farms, Inc., 69 F.3d 501, 504
 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (“The correction of an error must yield a
 different result in order for that error to have been harmful
 and thus prejudice a substantial right of a party.”). The
 Board explained that the system described in Sitrick “nec-
 essarily receives [a] selection [from the original video] in
 order to carry out the disclosed replacement.” J.A. 39. This
 selection necessarily requires the user to choose at least
 one pixel from the original video. See J.A. 1590 (Decl. Dr.
 Edward Delp ¶ 103) (Dr. Delp testifying that skilled arti-
 san “would necessarily have to select one or more pixels in
 order to select an image or portion of an image”). As Sitrick
 explains, “[i]t is a further object of the present invention to
 provide various means for selecting . . . and substituting
 portions of” the original video with what becomes the re-
 placement video. J.A. 1979 (Sitrick ¶¶ 7, 13).
     Finally, substantial evidence supports the Board’s ad-
 ditional findings as to Sitrick’s disclosures that are rele-
 vant to the data entry device limitation. Claim 1 of the ’591
 patent states that the “data entry device is selected from a
 group of devices consisting of: a keyboard” among other op-
 tions. Sitrick represents that its invention can be imple-
 mented on a “general purpose computer,” J.A. 1982-83,
 1988, 1990-91 (Sitrick ¶¶ 41, 46, 95, 115, 118, 121), and
 Prisua’s expert agreed that a “general purpose computer”
 includes a data entry device like a keyboard, J.A. 2299
 (Yolanda Prieto Dep.). Samsung’s expert, Dr. Delp, testi-
 fied that a skilled artisan would “recognize that the data
 entry device(s) connected to the general purpose computer
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 PRISUA ENGINEERING CORP. v.                               11
 SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.

 would be operably connected to the image capture device
 as well, which would enable user interaction with the im-
 age capture device,” and that “the data entry device for the
 general purpose computer would be used to interact with
 the computer to select content for viewing on the display
 device, as well as to interact with that content.” J.A. 1589-
 90 (Decl. of Edward Delp ¶¶ 100-01). Indeed, Sitrick is un-
 ambiguous that the substituted image is “user specified,”
 suggesting (if not requiring) there exists a data entry sys-
 tem to allow for that selection. J.A. 1980 (Sitrick ¶ 31).
     Thus, we find substantial evidence supports the
 Board’s finding that Sitrick teaches the data entry device
 limitation of claim 1 of the ’591 patent.
                              IV
     We have considered Prisua’s other arguments and find
 them unpersuasive. For the reasons above, we affirm the
 Board’s determination that claims 1-4 and 8 of the ’591 pa-
 tent are unpatentable as obvious.
                        AFFIRMED
                            COSTS
 Costs to Samsung.