PTAB

IPR2018-01016

Ruckus Wireless, Inc. v. XR COMMUNICATIONS, LLC

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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Steering Adaptive Antenna Arrays Using Routing Information
  • Brief Description: The ’231 patent relates to an apparatus for use in a wireless routing network that utilizes a multibeam adaptive antenna. The system employs routing information to selectively place transmission peaks and nulls in a coverage area, aiming to improve performance over conventional wireless networks by reducing interference.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-9 and 12 are obvious over Agee under 35 U.S.C. §103.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Agee (Patent 6,359,923).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Agee, which was not considered during original prosecution, discloses all elements of the challenged claims. Independent claim 1 recites an apparatus in a wireless routing network comprising an adaptive antenna, a coupled transmitter and receiver, control logic, and search receiver logic. Petitioner asserted that Agee teaches a telecommunications system with a beamforming adaptive antenna array that uses feedback for transmit beamforming. Specifically, Agee’s base station (Fig. 73) includes an adaptive antenna (120), a coupled transmitter path (up-converter 407, etc.), and a coupled receiver path (down-converter 405, etc.). The control logic is disclosed as using "weight values" (the claimed "routing information") to direct the antenna, forming desired beams and nulls to manage interference. The "search receiver logic" is disclosed in Agee’s computational flowchart (Fig. 85A), which shows an adaptive process for updating spectral and spatial weights based on cross-correlated signal information derived from received signals.
    • Motivation to Combine (for §103 grounds): As a single-reference ground, the motivation was inherent in Agee's disclosure. Petitioner contended that Agee presents a complete system where all claimed elements are integrated to achieve the same purpose as the ’231 patent: efficient use of spectral bandwidth in a wireless network through adaptive antenna techniques. A person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would have recognized that Agee's disclosed components were designed to work together in the described manner.
    • Expectation of Success (for §103 grounds): A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success in implementing the system taught by Agee because Agee provides detailed schematics (Fig. 73) and computational flowcharts (Fig. 85A) that describe the functional integration of the components. The reference explains how to calculate and apply weighting values for both transmission and reception to achieve beamforming and null steering, making the outcome predictable.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

Petitioner argued for the following constructions under the broadest reasonable interpretation standard to clarify the patentability analysis.

  • "Routing information" (claims 1, 4-9, 12): Proposed as "information used to direct outgoing multibeam electromagnetic signals." This broad construction was argued to encompass the "weight values" and "spreading weights" disclosed in Agee, which are used to control beamforming and null steering.
  • "synchronization packet" (claim 2): Proposed as "known sequence used to estimate channel information." This construction aligns with Agee's disclosure of using pilot tones (a known sequence) during a traffic establishment phase to calculate an initial channel response.
  • "Routing table" (claims 7, 8): Proposed as "a storage mechanism or data structure containing routing information such as weighting values." This construction allows Petitioner to identify the Spread Weight RAM and Despread Weight RAM in Agee's Fig. 85A4 as the claimed routing tables.
  • "Transmission Constraint" (claim 12): Proposed as "routing information relating to certain rules for transmissions." This allows the transmit weighting values in Agee, which are determined based on past reception and dictate the transmit pattern, to be construed as a transmission constraint.

5. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

Petitioner presented arguments that discretionary denial under 35 U.S.C. §§ 314 and 325 would be inappropriate.

  • It was argued that this was the first and only IPR petition filed by these Petitioners against the ’231 patent. While other IPRs against the patent existed (filed by Aruba Networks and Cisco Systems), Petitioners asserted they had no involvement in those proceedings. It was also noted that neither the Patent Owner's preliminary response nor an institution decision had been issued in those other cases.
  • Petitioner further argued that the primary prior art reference, Agee, was not cumulative to art previously considered by the USPTO during prosecution or in the other pending IPR petitions. Therefore, instituting review would not be an inefficient use of Board resources and would allow for a validity challenge on new grounds.

6. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1-9 and 12 of the ’231 patent as unpatentable.