2021-03-30
28 July 2021PatentsAlex Baldwin

Federal Circuit rules PTAB violated Qualcomm’s rights

The  US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated a US Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision to invalidate a Qualcomm patent for not giving the company the chance to respond to key claims in an oral hearing.

Circuit judges Jimmie Reyna and Kara Stoll said that the PTAB violated Qualcomm’s procedural rights in a  decision handed down on Tuesday.

Qualcomm asked the circuit to appeal six inter partes review final decisions which found claims 1–15, 17–25, and 27–33 of its US patent 9,608,675 obvious.

The ‘675 patent relates to “techniques for generating a power tracking supply voltage for a circuit that processes multiple radio frequency signals simultaneously, using one power amplifier and one power tracking supply generator”.

Qualcomm claims the invention increases bandwidth, reduces the number of circuit components and reduces power consumption.

Tech giant  Intel challenged the validity of the patent and petitioned for the six inter partes reviews. All challenged claims were found to be unpatentable by the board.

However, the Federal Circuit agrees that Qualcomm was not given the chance to respond to key questions presented to Intel at hearings.

Qualcomm also questioned the board’s construction of the patents’ “power tracker limitation” detailed in claim 28, but the circuit found no error in the board’s construction.

“Because the board failed to provide Qualcomm adequate notice of and opportunity to respond to its sua sponte claim construction, we vacate the board’s final written decisions and remand for further proceedings,” the Circuit concluded

No chance to respond

The appeal stems from a two-hour oral hearing, in which a PTAB judge asked Intel a question related to Qualcomm’s “increased bandwidth” claim and whether a “plurality of carrier aggregated transmit signals” was necessary for increasing bandwidth.

Neither judge on the panel gave Qualcomm any questions related to the increased bandwidth requirement, and the matter was not discussed further.

The day after the hearing, the board issued a sua sponte order for an additional briefing on the meaning of claims unrelated to the increased bandwidth dispute and ultimately concluded that all challenged claims were unpatentable.

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