Court Opinion

ID: 9959690
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-04-12 15:01:07.766101+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:18:44.835488
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-2147   Document: 39     Page: 1   Filed: 04/12/2024

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                 ______________________

 AVAGO TECHNOLOGIES INTERNATIONAL SALES
              PTE. LIMITED,
                Appellant

                            v.

                    NETFLIX, INC.,
                        Appellee
                 ______________________

                       2022-2147
                 ______________________

     Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark
 Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. IPR2021-
 00303.
                  ______________________

                 Decided: April 12, 2024
                 ______________________

    DAN YOUNG, Quarles & Brady LLP, Littleton, CO, ar-
 gued for appellant. Also represented by KENT DALLOW;
 CHAD KING, King IAM LLC, Lone Tree, CO.

    HARPER BATTS, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton
 LLP, Menlo Park, CA, argued for appellee. Also repre-
 sented by JEFFREY LIANG, CHRISTOPHER SCOTT PONDER.
                 ______________________
Case: 22-2147    Document: 39      Page: 2    Filed: 04/12/2024

 2     AVAGO TECHNOLOGIES INTERNATIONAL SALES PTE. LTD. v.
                                            NETFLIX, INC.

     Before TARANTO, STOLL, and STARK, Circuit Judges.
 TARANTO, Circuit Judge.
     In December 2020, Netflix, Inc. filed a petition seeking
 an inter partes review (IPR) of claims 1–14 and 16–19 of
 U.S. Patent No. 8,270,992, which is undisputedly owned by
 Avago Technologies International Sales Pte. Ltd. as as-
 signee. Upon institution and conduct of the IPR, the Pa-
 tent Trial and Appeal Board issued a final written decision
 holding claims 1–13 and 16–18 unpatentable for obvious-
 ness under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Netflix, Inc. v. Avago Technol-
 ogies International Sales Pte. Ltd., No. IPR2021-00303,
 2022 WL 2190436 (P.T.A.B. June 17, 2022) (Decision).
 Avago, which asserts the ’992 patent in a pending suit
 against Netflix, appeals the Board’s decision. We have ju-
 risdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A). We affirm.
     The ’992 patent teaches methods and systems for
 switching sources and, relatedly, network connections that
 are furnishing content to a user. In particular, if a user is
 receiving digital media content from a first source, the pa-
 tent calls for the user to instead receive that content from
 a second source when the network connection with the sec-
 ond source enables furnishing that content at a “higher
 quality level” to the user. See ’992 patent, col. 1, line 58,
 through col. 2, line 44. Claim 1 is representative:
     1. In a portable system, a method for providing a
     digital media service to a user, the method compris-
     ing:
         delivering digital media content having a
         current quality level to a user;
         determining that a network connection
         with a second system is available and is
         characterized by a communication band-
         width that is high enough to provide the
         digital media content to the user at a
Case: 22-2147     Document: 39     Page: 3     Filed: 04/12/2024

 AVAGO TECHNOLOGIES INTERNATIONAL SALES PTE. LTD. v.         3
 NETFLIX, INC.

         quality level higher than the current quality
         level;
         using the network connection to obtain the
         digital media content at the higher quality
         level from the second system; and
         delivering the digital media content at the
         higher quality level to the user instead of
         the digital media content at the current
         quality level.
 Id., col. 26, lines 29–43 (emphases added).
     This appeal involves the meaning of the quality-level
 claim terms, in phrases that refer to delivering, providing,
 or obtaining digital media content having or at a “current
 quality level” or a “higher quality level.” Explaining,
 among other things, that “the claim language itself de-
 scribes the digital media content’s quality level in terms of
 its delivery,” the Board rejected Avago’s contention that
 the quality-level terms are “limited to the quality of the
 digital media content independent of any network consid-
 erations.” Decision, at *5. Avago challenges the Board’s
 claim-construction determination, asserting that the
 claimed quality levels refer only to the quality level of the
 digital media content at the source, before and independent
 of any transmission-related degradation in quality due to
 network-based effects. See Avago Opening Br. at 33–34,
 37. The Board’s claim construction rested solely on the
 claim language and other intrinsic evidence, so we review
 it de novo. See Polaris Innovations Ltd. v. Brent, 48 F.4th
 1365, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2022).
     We agree with the Board that the quality-level terms
 concern quality level as the content is delivered to the user,
 which may well be affected by transmission properties, and
 we affirm on that basis. First, the claim language specifies
 (1) digital media content “having a current quality level”
 during the step of “delivering” that content “to a user,” (2)
Case: 22-2147     Document: 39      Page: 4    Filed: 04/12/2024

 4     AVAGO TECHNOLOGIES INTERNATIONAL SALES PTE. LTD. v.
                                            NETFLIX, INC.

 high enough bandwidth “to provide the digital media con-
 tent to the user at a quality level higher than the current
 quality level,” (3) “obtain[ing]” digital media content “at the
 higher quality level,” and (4) “delivering the digital media
 content at the higher quality level to the user.” ’992 patent,
 col. 26, lines 29–43 (emphases added). That language is
 concerned with the quality level of the content as received
 by the user, not merely with the content quality as stored
 at the source. Second, the claim language encompasses
 digital media services that stream content for real-time
 consumption by a user. See id., col. 3, lines 15–24 (defining
 a “service” as, among other things, comprising “an audio
 output service” or “a video output service”); see also J.A.
 495–96, col. 1, line 17, through col. 3, line 44 (providing
 background information on streaming services). And the
 claim’s reference to high-enough bandwidth confirms that
 network-transmission properties may affect the content
 quality level as that content is consumed by a user in real
 time. See ’992 patent, col. 6, lines 19–30 (stating that de-
 livery-related issues can render what would otherwise be
 “high quality information” of “little value” when “access . . .
 over a communication network . . . is slow or unreliable”);
 cf. id., col. 4, lines 31–38 (listing the “rate at which such
 information may be accessed” as one metric by which the
 quality level of a digital media service might be deter-
 mined). Overall, the claim language focuses on the as-re-
 ceived quality of the content, and that focus implies that
 the claimed quality levels need not be independent of any
 transmission- or delivery-related effects.
     With respect to other intrinsic evidence, Avago relies
 principally on the prosecution history. Avago Opening Br.
 at 39–48. (It relies also on passages from the specification,
 id. at 48–53, but the passages do not go beyond reciting
 non-limiting examples.) We agree with the Board that the
 prosecution history, see J.A. 168–76, does not justify the
 construction Avago urges.
Case: 22-2147     Document: 39     Page: 5    Filed: 04/12/2024

 AVAGO TECHNOLOGIES INTERNATIONAL SALES PTE. LTD. v.         5
 NETFLIX, INC.

      In the prosecution history, the examiner-cited prior art
 was distinguished by reference to the absence of a “second
 system” in that prior art (which taught changing links to
 an unchanged source), with the applicant arguing that the
 lack of such a second system meant that the prior art
 “necessar[ily]” failed to disclose “delivering the digital me-
 dia content at the higher quality level to the user” from that
 second system. J.A. 175 (emphasis added). Claim lan-
 guage was changed to require such a “second system.” J.A.
 168. That change exhausts the ultimate significance of the
 prosecution history, and Avago does not contend that the
 “second system” language calls for its proposed construc-
 tion. Rather, Avago relies on another change in the claim
 language—replacement of references in the body (but not
 the preamble) to a digital media “service” with references
 to digital media “content.” J.A. 168–73. But we, like the
 Board, find that change not to call for adoption of the qual-
 ity-level constraint that Avago now seeks to impose, be-
 cause that constraint is not fairly found in the resulting
 claim language and the argument that Avago made to the
 examiner does not require that constraint. See Decision, at
 *5 (concluding that “neither the amendment nor the re-
 lated arguments exclude network-related effects on the
 quality levels of delivered digital media content”).
     Avago’s additional arguments depend on its claim-con-
 struction position. Having rejected that position, we affirm
 the Board’s decision.
                         AFFIRMED