Apple Inc v. Cellular Communications Equipment LLC

1. Case Identification

• Case #: IPR2016-01480
• Patent #: 8,867,472
• Filed: July 22, 2016
• Petitioner(s): Apple Inc.
• Patent Owner(s): Cellular Communications Equipment LLC
• Challenged Claims: 1, 10, 11, 14, 28, 37, 38, and 41

2. Patent Overview

• Title: Aperiodic Channel Information Reporting
• Brief Description: The ’472 patent discloses methods for a mobile device (UE) in a multi-carrier wireless system to report communication quality. To reduce reporting overhead, the patent describes a system where a base station requests channel information for only a "selected" component carrier, and the UE determines this selected carrier based on which component carrier carried the request itself.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Seo - Claims 1, 10, 11, 14, 28, 37, 38, and 41 are obvious over Seo.

• Prior Art Relied Upon: Seo (Patent 8,625,513). Petitioner asserted that Seo is prior art under 35 U.S.C. §102(e) based on its PCT filing date of December 29, 2009. Petitioner further argued that teachings in Seo are entitled to the December 29, 2008 filing date of its provisional application (U.S. Provisional Application No. 61/141,211).
• Core Argument for this Ground:
  • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Seo addresses the exact same problem as the ’472 patent: reducing reporting overhead for Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) information in multi-carrier systems. Seo allegedly solves this problem in the same manner by proposing methods to report CQI for only a single, specific component carrier (CC). The petition focused on Seo’s "Embodiment 2," which explicitly teaches transmitting a CQI request within an uplink grant on the Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) in the specific downlink CC for which a report is desired. According to Petitioner, Seo teaches that upon receiving this request, the UE "transmits a CQI for a downlink CC... in which it has received a PDCCH carrying the uplink grant." This directly discloses the core limitation of independent claims 1 and 28: determining the selected component carrier based on which carrier carried the request. Dependent claims were argued to be obvious as they recite additional well-known features also taught by Seo, such as including the request in an uplink grant (claim 41) or providing information for other component carriers (claims 37 and 10).
  • Motivation to Combine (Rationale for Obviousness): As a single-reference ground, the argument focused on why a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would find the claimed invention obvious in light of Seo. Petitioner contended that the very limitation the Examiner identified as patentable during prosecution—determining the selected CC based on which CC carried the request—is expressly taught in Seo's Embodiment 2. Furthermore, Petitioner argued that even if this teaching were implicit, a POSITA would find it obvious to use the request's carrier as the indicator. This method is more efficient and requires less signaling overhead than explicitly identifying the target carrier, aligning perfectly with Seo's stated goal of reducing uplink CQI reporting overhead. A POSITA would have naturally sought the most efficient signaling method.
  • Expectation of Success: Petitioner asserted a POSITA would have had a high expectation of success because the technique of using the transmission carrier to implicitly identify a target for action was known in similar carrier aggregation systems and was described by Seo as a functional embodiment.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

• "channel information": Petitioner argued that for the purposes of the inter partes review (IPR), under the broadest reasonable interpretation, this term should be construed to encompass Channel State Information (CSI) and/or a Channel Quality Indicator (CQI), as supported by the patent’s specification.
• "a processor configured to...": Petitioner noted that while Patent Owner contends in district court litigation that this is not a means-plus-function limitation under §112, ¶ 6, the broadest reasonable interpretation for the IPR proceeding encompasses a processor that performs the recited functions. Petitioner asserted that the prior art teaches processors performing these exact functions, rendering the claims obvious regardless of the outcome of any §112 analysis.

5. Relief Requested

• Petitioner requests institution of IPR and cancellation of claims 1, 10, 11, 14, 28, 37, 38, and 41 of the ’472 patent as unpatentable.