PTAB

IPR2018-01641

Nokia of America Corporation v. Intellectual Ventures II LLC

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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Combined Open and Closed Loop Power Control
  • Brief Description: The ’828 patent describes a power control method for a user equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system. The method combines aspects of open-loop power control (based on path loss) and closed-loop power control (based on accumulated Transmit Power Control (TPC) commands) to set uplink transmit power. The key feature is a conditional logic where the UE receives an indication of whether TPC command accumulation is enabled, and calculates its transmit power differently depending on this state.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Zeira and Whinnett - Claims 1, 5-6, 8, 12-13, 15, 19-20, 22, 26-27, 29, 33-34, 36, and 40-41 are obvious over Zeira in view of Whinnett.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Zeira (Patent 6,728,292) and Whinnett (Application # 2004/0219919).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Zeira teaches the core concepts of the ’828 patent, including a combined open-loop and closed-loop power control system. Zeira discloses calculating transmit power based on both path loss (open-loop) and closed-loop power commands. Crucially, Zeira teaches a system that can switch between modes, effectively providing an "indication" of whether to use a combined scheme (accumulation enabled) or a purely open-loop scheme (accumulation not enabled), where power is based solely on path loss. Whinnett was argued to supply the teaching of sending an allocation for a scheduled uplink resource on a single physical channel (a downlink dedicated channel) alongside TPC commands, a feature of enhanced uplink (HSUPA) Node-B scheduling that was well-known at the time.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSA) would combine these references to improve system efficiency. Zeira provides a sophisticated, flexible power control method, while Whinnett provides an established mechanism for efficient uplink scheduling. Petitioner asserted it would have been a simple and predictable design choice to implement Zeira's known power control logic within the context of Whinnett's well-known enhanced uplink scheduling system to minimize interference and maximize throughput, which are shared goals of both references.
    • Expectation of Success: Both references describe compatible technologies within the WCDMA framework. Combining a known power control scheme with a known scheduling scheme on standard physical channels would have been a straightforward integration for a POSA with a high expectation of success.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Zeira, Whinnett, and R1-99151 - Claims 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, and 37 are obvious over Zeira in view of Whinnett and R1-99151.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Zeira (Patent 6,728,292), Whinnett (Application # 2004/0219919), and R1-99151 (a 3GPP technical document).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground builds upon the combination of Zeira and Whinnett from Ground 1 to address the dependent claims, which further require that the "TPC command is a multilevel TPC command." Petitioner contended that R1-99151, which discloses a method called Adaptive Step Power Control (ASPC), explicitly teaches this limitation. R1-99151 describes a system where the TPC step size is not fixed but is variable (i.e., multilevel), determined by the amplitude ratio between the power control data and a pilot symbol, allowing for better performance in varying channel conditions.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSA, having already constructed the system taught by Zeira and Whinnett, would be motivated to further optimize its performance. R1-99151 explicitly teaches that its adaptive, multilevel step size approach achieves better performance than conventional fixed-step-size power control. Incorporating this known improvement into the base system from Ground 1 would be a natural and obvious step to enhance adaptability and efficiency.
    • Expectation of Success: The concept of using adaptive step sizes for power control was a known technique for improving system performance. A POSA would have readily understood how to implement the ASPC method of R1-99151 into the power control loop of the Zeira/Whinnett system with a high expectation of success.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner asserted that claims with mutually exclusive conditional steps, such as independent claim 1, must be interpreted to cover at least two distinct methods under the broadest reasonable interpretation standard. This includes: (1) a method where accumulation is enabled and transmit power is calculated using both path loss and accumulated TPC commands, and (2) a method where accumulation is not enabled and power is calculated based on path loss alone. This interpretation is critical because Petitioner argued that the prior art teaches both of these distinct, switchable methods.

5. Key Technical Contentions

  • Petitioner's arguments were heavily rooted in the technical context of the 3GPP standards community prior to the ’828 patent's filing date. Petitioner contended that features like Node-B scheduling for enhanced uplinks (as taught by Whinnett) were not inventive leaps but were heavily discussed, publicized, and on the path to standardization (in HSUPA) within the 3GPP community. Therefore, a POSA would have been fully aware of these techniques and motivated to combine them with known power control schemes like Zeira's. The public availability of the cited 3GPP documents on public FTP servers was also established as a key fact.

6. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested institution of an inter partes review (IPR) and cancellation of claims 1-2, 5-6, 8-9, 12-13, 15-16, 19-20, 22-23, 26-27, 29-30, 33-34, 36-37, and 40-41 of the ’828 patent as unpatentable.