PTAB

IPR2019-00510

Apple Inc v. Uniloc 2017 LLC

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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Radio Communication System With Request Re-Transmission Until Acknowledged
  • Brief Description: The ’079 patent discloses methods and systems for radio communication between a primary station and secondary stations. The technology involves a secondary station repeatedly re-transmitting a request for service in consecutive time slots without waiting for a reply, continuing until an acknowledgement is received from the primary station.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 17 and 18 are obvious over Wolfe in view of Bousquet and Patsiokas.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Wolfe (Patent 4,763,325), Bousquet (Patent 6,298,052), and Patsiokas (WO 1992/021214).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Wolfe disclosed the foundational radio communication system, teaching a satellite Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) system with a primary "reference station" and multiple secondary "ground stations" that transmit service requests in allocated time slots. To this base system, Bousquet taught the claimed method of re-transmission; it addressed call setup delays in satellite systems by repeatedly transmitting access packets without waiting for an acknowledgement. Finally, Patsiokas taught the claimed signal strength determination, disclosing a method where a primary station measures the Received Signal Strength (RSS) of an incoming request and only grants the request if the RSS exceeds a predetermined threshold, thereby preventing dropped calls.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Wolfe and Bousquet to solve the known and significant problem of signal propagation delay in satellite systems like Wolfe’s. Using Bousquet's method of pre-emptive re-transmission would predictably reduce call setup time. A POSITA would further be motivated to incorporate Patsiokas’s signal strength thresholding technique into the Wolfe-Bousquet system to improve its reliability. This addition would address the separate, well-known problem of variable channel quality and dropped calls by ensuring that system resources are allocated only to secondary stations with a sufficiently strong connection.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success, as the combination involved applying known solutions (Bousquet’s re-transmission protocol and Patsiokas’s signal thresholding) to address predictable problems (latency and dropped calls) within the same technical field of radio and satellite communications.

Ground 2: Claims 17 and 18 are obvious over Wolfe in view of Bousquet, Everett, and Patsiokas.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Wolfe (Patent 4,763,325), Bousquet (Patent 6,298,052), Patsiokas (WO 1992/021214), and Everett (a 1992 publication on Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSATs)).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground asserted that the combination from Ground 1 rendered the claims obvious, but added Everett to further support the obviousness of re-transmitting a request until an acknowledgement is received. Petitioner argued that Everett explicitly disclosed a satellite system where a secondary station (VSAT) sends a request on a "calling" channel and, if it does not receive an acknowledgement from the primary station (hub), will "re-transmit its request and continue re-transmitting until it receives an acknowledgment." Everett described this as a standard technique for managing network access.
    • Motivation to Combine: The motivation for this combination was to incorporate a well-understood and beneficial control mechanism into the system of Ground 1. A POSITA would have recognized that Everett’s acknowledgement-based re-transmission protocol provided a routine method for improving channel utilization and system integrity. This technique would prevent secondary stations from re-transmitting requests indefinitely or unnecessarily, complementing the speed benefits from Bousquet and the reliability benefits from Patsiokas.
    • Expectation of Success: Success was expected because adding Everett's teachings represented a routine application of a well-known communication protocol to a known system type to achieve the predictable benefits of improved efficiency and control over network resources.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "acknowledgement": Petitioner proposed the construction "a message sent from the primary station to the secondary station stating the primary station's receipt of the secondary station's request." This construction was argued to be critical because it differentiates a simple receipt confirmation from a message that also grants a service or allocates a channel, a distinction Petitioner argued was supported by the patent's specification and file history.
  • Means-Plus-Function Terms (Claim 18): Petitioner addressed two means-plus-function limitations in claim 18:
    • "Means for Allocating...": Petitioner argued the corresponding structure is a microcontroller performing the specific algorithms disclosed in the ’079 patent for dividing the uplink channel and allocating time slots. Petitioner contended that Wolfe's "frame management CPU" disclosed an equivalent structure performing the same function.
    • "Means for Re-Transmitting...": Petitioner argued the corresponding structure is a transceiver controlled by a microcontroller performing the re-transmission algorithm shown in Figure 3 of the ’079 patent. The combined teachings of Wolfe (providing the basic controller and transceiver) and Bousquet (providing the re-transmission logic) were argued to render this structure obvious.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 17 and 18 of the ’079 patent as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.