Federal Circuit Slices the Bologna Thin with IPR Rehearing Waiver Decision
Patent – Patently-O 2024-08-01
Summary:
by Dennis Crouch
Voice Tech Corp. v. Unified Patents, LLC, No. 2022-2163 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 1, 2024)
Unified Patents is paid by its members to fight against non-practicing entity (NPE) patent assertions — often by challenge patent validity via inter partes review. In this case, Unified challenged Voice Tech’s U.S. Patent No. 10,491,679 which covers technology for controlling a computer via a mobile device using voice commands. At the conclusion of the IPR, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) sided with Unified – finding all challenged claims (1-8) of the ‘679 patent unpatentable as obvious over the combination of two prior art references, Wong and Beauregard. The PTAB also denied Voice Tech’s request for rehearing. On appeal, the patentee won a minor battle on waiver, but ultimately lost on the merits.
In particular, the court refused to delve into the claim construction issue because the briefing failed to explain how a narrower construction would have altered the result. On obviousness, the court rejected the patentee’s challenges to PTAB’s conclusions on the scope of prior art disclosures and motivation to combine.
The invention purports to enable a single mobile device to remotely access and control multiple native applications and operating system functions at a computer, without requiring application-specific configurations.