PTAB

IPR2025-00922

Apple Inc v. Apex Beam Technologies LLC

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Method and Device for Multi-Antenna Transmission in UE and Base Station
  • Brief Description: The ’271 patent discloses techniques for improving wireless transmission quality by having a user equipment (UE) measure channel qualities from multiple base station antenna port groups. The UE identifies a subset of these groups, determines a proportional relationship among their channel quality values, and transmits this information back to the base station to enable the generation of a more accurate serving beam.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 1-20 are obvious over Liu in view of Park.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Liu (International Publication No. WO 2016/015307) and Park (International Publication No. WO 2016/126099).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Liu discloses the foundational method for multi-antenna transmission where a UE receives configuration signaling and wireless signals (e.g., reference signals) from a base station’s multiple antenna ports or port groups. Liu’s UE measures the channel quality, specifically the Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP), for these groups, selects a subset of N optimal ports based on a predefined criterion (e.g., strongest signal), and reports this selection back as Channel State Information (CSI). While Liu teaches selecting the strongest signals, Petitioner asserted it lacks a specific method for ensuring the selected signals have comparable strength. Park allegedly supplies this missing element by teaching a method to select "strongly received" antenna ports by comparing each port's RSRP to the maximum RSRP to form an "RSRP ratio." Park discloses that ports are selected if this ratio, or a corresponding dB difference, exceeds a predetermined threshold. The combination, therefore, teaches all limitations of independent claims 1, 6, 11, and 16, including determining K1 antenna port groups from a larger set of K groups, establishing a "first proportional sequence" (the RSRP ratios from Park), and comparing a ratio between a "best" and "worse" channel quality to a "target threshold."
    • Motivation to Combine (for §103 grounds): A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Park’s relative comparison method with Liu’s antenna selection framework to improve system performance. Liu's method of selecting an ordinal ranking of the strongest signals (e.g., top three) could result in selecting signals with widely disparate power levels, which is suboptimal for transmit diversity. A POSITA would have recognized that applying Park’s "RSRP ratio" threshold ensures that only antenna ports with signal strengths comparable to the strongest signal are selected. This enhances the integrity and reliability of a Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system by using multiple beams of sufficient and similar strength.
    • Expectation of Success (for §103 grounds): A POSITA would have a reasonable expectation of success in this combination because it involves applying a conventional calculation to known signal measurements. Park's RSRP ratio determination is a basic calculation (division of power values or subtraction of dB values) performed on the RSRP values already measured in Liu's system. The result of applying this known technique would be predictable: the selection of a more robust set of antenna port groups for transmission.

4. Arguments Regarding Discretionary Denial

  • Petitioner argued that discretionary denial is unwarranted. Petitioner stated its intent to use the bifurcated briefing process to rebut any contrary contentions from the Patent Owner regarding discretionary denial.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review (IPR) and cancellation of claims 1-20 of the ’271 patent as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.