FitBit kicks out pedometer patent at Fed Circuit
FitBit has scored a patent invalidation win at the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit over patent assertion entity Blackbird Technologies.
In an opinion issued last Thursday, August 6, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decision to invalidate a claim of a pedometer patent (US number 6,434,212).
The patent covers technology including a step counter, a wearable receiver, and a data processor designed to calculate metrics such as distance travelled and speed.
FitBit filed a petition at the PTAB for inter partes review (IPR) of claims 2, 5, and 6 of the ‘212 patent in 2017.
The sports devices manufacturer unsuccessfully argued that claims 2 and 5 of the patent were obvious in light of a US patent referred to as ‘Amano’ (number 6,241,684).
But the PTAB did invalidate claim 6 as obvious in light of Amano, in combination with another US patent known as ‘Kato’ (number 5,033,013).
Blackbird appealed this element of the decision to the Federal Circuit, arguing that Kato does not disclose a “data processor programmed to calculate a distance travelled by multiplying a number of steps counted by a stride length”.
According to Blackbird, the PTAB was obligated to explain why a person of ordinary skill in the art would have used a particular equation, cited in Kato, for calculating distance.
Blackbird claimed that the PTAB had “worked backward, with knowledge of the claimed invention, to modify the reference in such a way so as to arrive at the claimed invention”.
But the Federal Circuit disagreed, and backed the PTAB’s original conclusion that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have arrived at the claimed invention on the bases of the Amano/Kato combination.
It is another Federal Circuit defeat for Blackbird after the company was ordered to pay attorneys’ fees for its “ frivolous” litigation last December.
The Federal Circuit, on that occasion, held that Blackbird put forward “meritless” infringement claims in a lawsuit against Health In Motion and Leisure Fitness Equipment.
Blackbird was ordered to pay $363,243 to cover the defendants’ attorney fees and expenses.
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