PTAB

IPR2017-01947

Apple Inc v. Valencell Inc

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Non-Invasive Health Monitoring with Motion Artifact Removal
  • Brief Description: The ’180 patent relates to a wearable device for non-invasive physiological monitoring. The technology's core concept involves directing energy at a target tissue region with high blood flow and an adjacent region with lower blood flow, detecting the respective energy response signals, and processing them via subtraction to remove motion artifacts and isolate a clean physiological signal.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Kondo, Hatschek, and Stivoric - Claims 1-17 and 21-32 are obvious under 35 U.S.C. §103 over Kondo in view of Hatschek and Stivoric.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Kondo (Application # 2003/0109791), Hatschek (Patent 5,299,570), and Stivoric (Application # 2004/0039254).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Kondo disclosed the core elements of the claimed method: a wearable device that monitors a physiological property (a photoelectric pulse wave) and subtracts motion artifacts. Kondo achieved this by directing red light at a blood vessel (the target region) and blue light at the general skin surface to capture a motion signal. To satisfy the "more blood flow" limitation, Petitioner cited Hatschek, which describes the well-known anatomical structure of skin, where the dermis (containing blood vessels) underlies the epidermis (lacking blood vessels). Petitioner argued it would have been obvious that Kondo's sensor, measuring a blood vessel and the skin surface, was inherently measuring two regions with different blood flow characteristics.
    • Motivation to Combine: A person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would naturally consider the known anatomical context described in Hatschek when implementing Kondo's sensor, thus arriving at the claimed configuration. A POSITA would further combine these teachings with Stivoric, which explicitly teaches integrating a processor into a wearable armband for analyzing physiological data. The motivation was to gain the known benefits of a self-contained device, such as reduced transmission noise, lower power consumption, and improved user convenience.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have a high expectation of success, as the combination involved applying a known component (Stivoric's integrated processor) to a known sensor system (Kondo's) to achieve predictable and well-understood improvements.

Ground 2: Obviousness over O'Sullivan and Steuer - Claims 1, 4-5, 11-14, 24-26, 29, and 32 are obvious over O'Sullivan in view of Steuer.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: O'Sullivan (Patent 5,494,043) and Steuer (Patent 6,725,072).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground was presented as an alternative argument, applicable if "adjacent" is construed narrowly as "laterally adjacent" rather than in depth. Petitioner asserted that O'Sullivan disclosed a wearable sensor with a central element placed over an artery (target region) and two side elements placed on the surrounding tissue (adjacent region). O'Sullivan used piezoelectric sensors but explicitly suggested that optical sensors could be used instead. Steuer was cited as teaching a specific optical sensor arrangement for implementing this suggestion, as it discloses a wearable optical sensor with emitters and detectors aligned to measure both a vascular access site (high flow) and the surrounding tissue (low flow) to remove noise.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA, guided by O'Sullivan's explicit suggestion to use optical sensors, would be motivated to look to known optical sensor designs like Steuer, which addresses the identical technical problem of isolating a physiological signal from motion artifacts using laterally adjacent measurements.
    • Expectation of Success: Petitioner argued that replacing the piezoelectric sensors of O'Sullivan with the well-understood optical sensor system of Steuer would be a simple substitution of one known element for another to obtain predictable results.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges based on building upon the two primary combinations. These grounds added a single tertiary reference to address specific dependent claims, such as combining Kim (teaching the use of an LED as a detector), Villers (teaching monolithic optical sensor arrays), or Lewis (teaching the use of different wavelengths) with the primary combinations of Kondo/Hatschek/Stivoric and O'Sullivan/Steuer.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "Adjacent": Petitioner argued this term should be interpreted broadly to include regions that "overlap or underlie" one another (i.e., adjacency in depth), as this is explicitly supported by the patent's specification. This construction supported the primary Kondo-based grounds. The O'Sullivan-based grounds were presented as a fallback to address a potentially narrower construction of "laterally adjacent."
  • "Subtracting a signal associated with motion": Petitioner argued this phrase, based on the specification and claim differentiation principles, should encompass both (1) removing a motion signal detected separately (e.g., via an accelerometer) and (2) removing the effect of motion by subtracting the energy response signals from the two different tissue regions (target and adjacent) from each other.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review of claims 1-32 of Patent 9,044,180 and cancellation of all challenged claims as unpatentable.