IP News

On May 8, 2017, Federal Circuit Judges Reyna, Wallach, and Chen issued a unanimous decision, authored by Judge Reyna, in Intellectual Ventures II LLC v. Ericsson Inc., Case Nos. 2016-1739, 2016-1740, and 2016-1741. The panel affirmed a decision by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board (the Board) invalidating Intellectual Ventures II LLC's (IV) patents in Nos. IPR2014-00915, IPR2014-00919, and IPR2014-01031.

In 2014, the Board granted two IPR petitions by Ericsson Inc. and Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson and one IPR petition by Google, Inc. The petitions challenged claims which disclosed a method for efficiently synchronizing cellphone base stations on a selected frequency. IV argued before the Board that the term “an indication of an operating bandwidth” referred to a particular operating bandwidth. Ericsson argued that IV's construction was unduly narrow, and Google argued that the plain and ordinary meaning should control. The Board adopted a claim construction that no party had argued for, which required “that the first signal portion contains sufficient information” such that “the receiver is able to configure itself to receive the data portion of the signal” at “approximately the same frequency range or bandwidth at which it will be transmitted by the transmitter.”