PTAB

IPR2016-01550

Parrot SA v. QFO Labs Inc

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Homeostatic Flying Hovercraft
  • Brief Description: The ’239 patent relates to a toy flying hovercraft featuring at least four electrically powered thrusters, a "homeostatic" control system for automatic stabilization, and a handheld remote controller that governs the craft’s orientation based on the controller's own physical orientation as sensed by internal sensors.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Louvel, Thomas, and Jimenez - Claims 1-3, 5-7, and 9-10 are obvious over Louvel in view of Thomas and in further view of Jimenez.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Louvel (Application # 2002/0104921), Thomas (Patent 5,128,671), and Jimenez (Application # 2002/0106966).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the primary reference, Louvel, discloses the core of the invention: a remotely controlled, saucer-shaped toy aircraft with four thrusters and a "closed loop" (i.e., homeostatic) control system using a three-axis sensor to maintain a stable attitude. However, Louvel’s controller is physically tethered to the aircraft. To remedy this, Petitioner asserted that a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSA) would look to references like Jimenez, which teaches a wireless RF receiver and transmitter for controlling a toy aerial vehicle. Furthermore, to provide a more intuitive control method, a POSA would incorporate the teachings of Thomas, which discloses a handheld controller with internal accelerometers that senses its own two-axis orientation to control an aircraft wirelessly.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would combine Louvel with Jimenez to replace the cumbersome and weight-adding physical cable with a standard wireless RF link, a well-known and predictable improvement. A POSITA would further combine this with Thomas to replace Louvel’s basic handle with Thomas's more advanced and user-friendly orientation-based controller, as Thomas explicitly teaches its controller is suitable for aircraft. Both combinations involve applying known techniques to similar devices to achieve predictable results.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination of these known elements from the same field of remote-controlled aerial toys would have yielded predictable results.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Gordon and Thomas - Claims 1-2, 5-10, and 9-10 are obvious over Gordon in view of Thomas.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Gordon (a 1993 publication titled "Rotorcraft Aerial Robot – Challenges and Solutions") and Thomas (Patent 5,128,671).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner contended that Gordon discloses a remote-controlled model helicopter with an autonomous "on-board flight control system" used to stabilize flight. This system includes a six-axis sensor suite with linear accelerometers to detect a gravity vector for attitude determination (a homeostatic system) and uses RF communication for remote control. Although Gordon describes a two-rotor helicopter, Petitioner argued that modifying this to a four-thruster design was a routine design choice known in the art. Thomas was cited for the same reasons as in Ground 1: it teaches the handheld, orientation-sensing controller that would replace the more conventional controller in Gordon.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would have been motivated to combine Gordon and Thomas because both references are in the narrow field of controlling unmanned aerial vehicles. A POSITA would have readily substituted the generic radio controller of Gordon with the more advanced, user-friendly, motion-sensing controller taught by Thomas to improve the system's usability. Thomas provides a clear method for deriving control inputs from the controller's orientation, which would be a logical and predictable improvement to Gordon's system.
    • Expectation of Success: Combining Thomas's controller with Gordon's autonomous vehicle was a simple substitution of one known type of remote controller for another to gain a known benefit, and a POSA would have had a high expectation of success.
  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges based on combinations of Louvel/Gordon with Yavnai (Patent 6,588,701) for explicitly teaching ducted fans to improve efficiency and safety, and with Carroll (Patent 6,847,865) for teaching bidirectional RF transceivers to allow data transmission from the aircraft back to the controller. These arguments relied on similar design modification theories.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner argued that several terms in independent claim 6 are means-plus-function limitations subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §112, ¶6, as they lack sufficient recitation of structure.
  • Petitioner identified corresponding structures from the ’239 patent’s specification for these terms, including:
    • "sensing means": The three-dimensional, three-axis sensor system and associated circuitry.
    • "control means": The control circuitry that processes sensor data to automatically control thruster output.
    • "radio means": The RF receiver and transmitter components for communication.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-10 of the ’239 patent as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.