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IP News

By Jeff Ginsberg and George Soussou
November 01, 2018

Obviousness Determination Can Be Different for Apparatus and Method Claims

On Sept. 13, 2018, a Federal Circuit panel of Judges O'Malley, Reyna, and Taranto issued a per curium decision in ParkerVision, Inc. v. Qualcomm Inc. et al., No. 2017-2012 (Fed. Cir. 2018). The Federal Circuit affirmed the decision of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeals Board (the Board) that the apparatus claims of U.S. Patent No. 6,091,940 (the '940 patent) were unpatentable as obvious under 35 U.S.C. §103. In addition, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Board's determination that the method claims of the '940 patent were not unpatentable.

ParkerVision, Inc. (ParkerVision) owns the '940 patent, titled “Method and System for Frequency Up-Conversion.” Id. at 2. The invention relates to “telecommunications devices, such as cellular phones, in which low-frequency electromagnetic signals are 'up-converted' to higher-frequency signals by various means.” Id. The invention sought to improve the efficiency of up-conversion by “modulating the amplitude of the baseband signal with the help of an 'oscillating signal.'” Id. at 3.

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