PTAB

IPR2018-01694

Ericsson Inc v. Intellectual Ventures II LLC

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Uplink Power Control
  • Brief Description: The ’828 patent discloses methods for uplink power control in a wireless communication system. The purported novelty is a method that strategically combines aspects of "open loop" power control (based on path loss) and "closed loop" power control (based on an accumulation of Transmit Power Control (TPC) commands) and allows a User Equipment (UE) to switch between the combined scheme and a conventional open loop scheme based on an indication from the network.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Zeira, Chen, and Cheng - Claims 1, 5, 8, 12, 15, 19, 22, 26, 29, 33, 36, and 40 are obvious over the combination of Zeira, Chen, and Cheng.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Zeira (Patent 6,728,292), Chen (Patent 7,532,572), and Cheng (Patent 6,411,817).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the core concept of combining open and closed loop power control, central to the ’828 patent, was disclosed by Zeira. Zeira taught a system that could operate in a combined mode (using both path loss and accumulated TPC commands), a pure open loop mode, or a pure closed loop mode, selectable by weighting factors. However, Zeira did not explicitly teach a network sending a dynamic signal to the UE to switch modes. Cheng remedied this by disclosing a system where a base station sends a "physical layer control message" to a mobile station to dynamically change between different power control modes. Further, the claimed limitation of receiving an uplink resource allocation and a TPC command on a single physical channel was obvious from combining Zeira with Chen. Zeira taught sending TPC commands on a dedicated channel, and Chen taught sending uplink resource allocations on a dedicated control channel.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Zeira with Cheng to implement Zeira’s selectable power control schemes. Cheng provided a known, advantageous method for signaling a mode change, which would allow a network operator to flexibly manage UE power control based on network conditions or UE capabilities, a desire explicitly contemplated by Zeira. A POSITA would combine this system with Chen to efficiently send both TPC commands and resource allocations on the same dedicated channel, which was a natural design choice to conserve resources and ensure the UE's power was adjusted before transmitting on the allocated resource.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination involved applying known techniques (Cheng's signaling, Chen's resource allocation) to a known system (Zeira's flexible power control) to achieve a predictable result. A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success because the integration of these well-understood 3GPP-related technologies was straightforward and yielded only the expected benefits of each individual reference.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Zeira, Chen, Cheng, and Tong - Claims 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, and 37 are obvious over the combination of Zeira, Chen, Cheng, and Tong.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Zeira (Patent 6,728,292), Chen (Patent 7,532,572), Cheng (Patent 6,411,817), and Tong (Patent 6,529,741).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the combination in Ground 1 by adding Tong. The challenged dependent claims required the TPC command to be a "multilevel TPC command." Tong explicitly disclosed using multilevel TPC commands (e.g., using more than one bit) to allow for multiple power adjustment step sizes, which provides faster and more efficient power adjustment.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would be motivated to incorporate Tong’s multilevel TPC commands into the Zeira/Chen/Cheng system as a matter of simple design choice to improve performance. Zeira itself recognized the need for quick adaptation in dynamic environments. Tong taught that multilevel TPC commands provided this benefit by minimizing power overshoot and compensating for deep fading. Therefore, adding Tong's established technique was an obvious way to enhance the base system's performance.
    • Expectation of Success: Implementing multilevel TPC commands was a known technique with predictable benefits. A POSITA would expect that substituting Tong’s multilevel commands for the binary TPC commands in the base system would predictably result in more efficient power control without altering the system's fundamental operation.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Zeira, Chen, Cheng, and Shiu - Claims 6, 13, 20, 27, 34, and 41 are obvious over the combination of Zeira, Chen, Cheng, and Shiu.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Zeira (Patent 6,728,292), Chen (Patent 7,532,572), Cheng (Patent 6,411,817), and Shiu (Patent 6,983,166).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground added Shiu to the base combination of Ground 1 to address dependent claims requiring that the calculated transmit power is based on a "selected transport format." Zeira's power calculation was based on a target Signal-to-Interference Ratio (SIR). Shiu taught that it was well-known to select a target SIR (or SNIR) based on the chosen transport format to maintain a desired level of performance (e.g., a target block error rate).
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA would have been motivated to combine Shiu’s teachings with the Zeira/Chen/Cheng system to optimize performance. Since Zeira's system relied on a target SIR, and Shiu taught a conventional method for determining that target SIR based on transport format, it would have been obvious to implement Shiu's method to allow the system to adjust transmit power more effectively to achieve target error rates for different data transmissions.
    • Expectation of Success: Combining these teachings was predictable. Applying Shiu’s method of adjusting the target SIR based on transport format to Zeira’s power control scheme would predictably improve the system by allowing it to maintain performance across various data rates and formats, a common goal in wireless system design.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "accumulation of transmit power control (TPC) commands": Petitioner proposed construing this term to mean "increasing or decreasing transmit power based on a TPC command where the transmit power is also based on one or more previous TPC commands." This construction was argued to be consistent with the specification's description of an iterative, summative process for updating UE transmit power.
  • "multilevel TPC command": Petitioner proposed construing this term as a "TPC command that can represent one of more than two possible transmit power adjustments." This was based on the specification contrasting it with binary TPC commands that indicate a change by a single fixed amount, either up or down.

5. 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 Patent 8,897,828 as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.