by Dennis Crouch

The text of the Patent Act suggests that obviousness is a straightforward inquiry: find how the claimed invention differs from the prior art and ask whether, based upon those differences, an objective artisan would deem the invention obvious. 35 U.S.C. § 103. In reality, the analysis is not easy or straightforward. At the end of the day, tribunals are often left guessing whether the invention went far enough—are the differences from the prior art meaningful in some way or are they merely points of distinction. There are myriad ways that patentees endeavor to show results that are important, surprising, or synergistic—all terms that connote non-obviousness. One way to show meaning is through the use of what the Supreme Court has termed “secondary considerations” and others term “objective indicia.”

Such secondary considerations as commercial success, long felt but unsolved needs, failure of others, etc., might be utilized to give light to the circumstances surrounding the origin of the subject matter sought to be patented. As indicia of obviousness or nonobviousness, these inquiries may have relevancy. See Note, Subtests of “Nonobviousness”: A Nontechnical Approach to Patent Validity, 112 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1169 (1964).

Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966). When courts ask about the importance of the advance, they must take care to ensure a nexus between the advance and its import. Focusing on the importance of the advance incentivizes advances that are important. Nexus is always relevant when considering if an advance is meaningful, but in recent years the Federal Circuit has aggressively used nexus particularly to limit the use of objective indicia such as industry praise or commercial success. Rather than permitting a fact to weigh the evidence, the court requires a proven nexus before any consideration of the objective indicia and its impact. Often industry praise and commercial success are tied to a commercial product rather than “the invention.” In this situation—where a product has been successful and praised—courts have permitted the patentee to prove a nexus linking the praise to the invention by pointing to the product and showing the product is an embodiment of the patent claim and the claimed invention is not merely a small component of the invention. In various formulations, the court has seen this as requiring the product to be “commensurate in scope” or “coextensive” with the claimed features. See Polaris Industries, Inc. v. Arctic Cat, Inc., 882 F.3d 1056, 1072 (Fed. Cir. 2018); Asyst Techs., Inc. v. Emtrak, Inc., 544 F.3d 1310, 1316 (Fed. Cir. 2008); In re Grasselli, 713 F.2d 731, 743 (Fed. Cir. 1983); Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. v. Philip Morris Inc., 229 F.3d 1120, 1130 (Fed. Cir. 2000); Demaco Corp. v. F. Von Langsdorff Licensing Ltd., 851 F.2d 1387, 1392 (Fed. Cir. 1988). A difficulty with this formulary is that there are always unclaimed features found in any product, and so it is difficult to know when the two are “coextensive.” In its important 2019 Fox Factory decision, the Federal Circuit drew a hard line, requiring the product and claim be “essentially” identical:

Although we do not require the patentee to prove perfect correspondence to meet the coextensiveness requirement, what we do require is that the patentee demonstrate that the product is essentially the claimed invention. While coextensiveness is an issue of fact that should ordinarily be decided by the fact finder in the first instance, no reasonable fact finder could conclude, under the proper standard, that the X-Sync chainrings are coextensive with the patent claims.

Fox Factory, Inc. v. SRAM, LLC, 944 F.3d 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (citing to Demaco Corp. v. F. Von Langsdorff Licensing Ltd., 851 F.2d 1387, 1392 (Fed. Cir. 1988)). I wrote about Fox Factory back in 2019 and explained:

The court here again raised the “nexus” hurdle by holding that a presumption of nexus can only be achieved by proving that the product being sold by the patentee is “essentially the claimed invention.” This is a situation where SRAM owned two patents in the same patent family — both of which covered aspects of its X-Sync bicycle chainring (gear). Each patent included elements not claimed in the other — for the court that was enough evidence to disprove coexistence.

Dennis Crouch, Nexus: Product must be “Essentially the Claimed Invention”, Patently-O (December 18, 2019). Since the product in Fox Factory included multiple inventions—each covered by its own patent—the patentee was unable to show that any one of the inventions had nexus with the product. (Note here in Fox Factory, we are not talking about some complex invention – it was only a chain ring, i.e. a gear, that sold well).

An important en banc petition is pending before the Federal Circuit in Zaxcom, Inc. v. Lectrosonics, Inc., 20-1921 (Fed. Cir. 2022) involving that nexus and asking the Federal Circuit to reconsider its Fox Factory precedent. The setup in the case is fairly typical: Zaxcom sued Lectrosonics for patent infringement back in 2019 (D.New Mexico); Lectrosonics responded with two inter partes review petitions. The PTAB granted both IPR petitions and then cancelled the challenged claims as obvious. On appeal the Federal Circuit affirmed, and Zaxcom has now petitioned for en banc rehearing.

The Zaxcom inventions relate to a wireless method for multi-track video recording. The problem with wireless was always timing, and the inventions here solve that with very particular time-codes. The invention here was said to change the industry, and the inventors were awarded both an Emmy and an Oscar. Here is the deal, the invention is embodied in the product, and the praise was tied to the new functionality offered. But, the invention also includes features claimed in a different patent. Because of that, the Board found no nexus and refused to consider the Emmy/Oscar results based upon Fox Factory. On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed. The petition now asks for reconsideration of Fox Factory and its progeny:

By deviating from established law, the Fox Factory panel precedent has triggered a need for en banc review. This Court has warned against unduly “strict requirements” in evaluating nexus. Rambus. Nowhere is the wisdom of this warning more apparent than in the present case. Here, it is undisputed that products embodying the claimed invention (Zaxcom’s wireless audio recording system) received industry praise, including a technical Oscar and an Emmy. Lectrosonics did not contend that the claimed invention is just a “small component” of this system. Under this pre-Fox Factory standard, this entitles Zaxcom to a presumption of nexus. Yet the Board and the panel not only rejected this presumption but quixotically failed to find that the claimed invention received any industry praise, because they found that another feature contributed to the praise but was not required by the claims. Put another way, the decisions below disregarded the fact that products embodying the claimed invention undisputedly received the equivalent of not just one Nobel Prize in its field, but two.

Zaxcom En Banc Petition. Retired Chief Judge Paul Michel added amicus support:

What started as a relatively straightforward evidentiary presumption to facilitate the obviousness analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103 has now morphed into a complex analysis “requir[ing] the fact finder to consider the unclaimed features of the stated products to determine their level of significance and their impact on the correspondence between the claim and the products.” Teva Pharms. Int’l GmbH v. Eli Lilly & Co., 8 F.4th 1349 (Fed. Cir. 2021) (citing Fox Factory, Inc. v. SRAM, LLC, 944 F.3d 1366, 1375 (Fed. Cir. 2019)). In addition to the new “level of significance” factor, recent cases have imposed an “essentially claimed” factor in the presumption analysis. See, e.g., Quanergy Sys., Inc. v. Velodyne Lidar USA, Inc., 24 F.4th 1406, 1418 (Fed. Cir. 2022). These new “requirements” of the presumption-of-nexus analysis conflict with this Court’s precedent.

Judge Michel brief.  I expect responsive briefs from both the USPTO and the patent challenger Lectrosonics in late April 2022.

by Dennis Crouch

Synopsis of this decision

Appellee: The argument proposed is hair-splitting and irrelevant to the purpose of the invention.

Federal Circuit: Hair-splitting is what we do best, and also barring wax noses.

Read more below . . .

CommScope Techs. v. Dali Wireless (Fed. Cir. 2021)

CommScope and Dali are competing in the wireless communications infrastructure market.   Both of the parties are making distributed antenna systems that allow for  seamless wireless communications within a wide area.   CommScope has 30,000 employees and is a Goliath.  Although Dali’s CEO Albert Lee has no sling+pebble, he does have a potential secret weapon. Lee is a former patent attorney.  The two companies have been battling in court and before the PTAB for the past several years.

In 2019, CommScope sued Dali for patent infringement (asserting five different patents); Dali counterclaimed asserting two of its own patents.  A jury agreed, and found that both sides were infringing. N.D.Tex. Chief Judge Lynn denied the cross-JMOL motions and entered judgment.  Dali gets $9 million and CommScope gets $6 million and a permanent injunction against sales of particular distributed antenna systems.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit has reversed in-part – finding no infringement of Dali’s ‘521 patent.

Here, the asserted method claim requires “switching a controller off” as part of a diagnostic training process.  The accused device was shown to switch off feedback from the controller, but not the controller itself.  Although the accused device achieves the same diagnostic results, it uses an approach that is not literally claimed.  Dali called the distinction “hair-splitting” and “irrelevant in light of the purpose of the invention.”  On appeal, the Federal Circuit concluded that hair splitting is what we do in the context of literal infringement.  If the patentee wanted more nuance then it should have presented its case under the doctrine-of-equivalents.

Before the district court, Dali presented only a literal infringement case, and not a doctrine-of-equivalents alternative. Thus, Dali’s argument that the FlexWave switch/controller is effectively “nonoperating” because it is not passing a feedback signal of the power amplifier of interest is irrelevant because Dali failed to produce evidence below to show that the accused controller is literally nonoperating, as the district court determined was required by the claim.

Slip Op.

= = = =

Patentees have to thread a narrow needle during infringement litigation.  The claims must be broad enough to capture the accused infringing activity, but narrow enough to avoid the prior art.  Although infringement and novelty are two separate considerations, they are tightly related.  “That which infringes, if later, would anticipate, if earlier.” Peters v. Active Mfg. Co., 129 U.S. 530, 537 (1889).  Often a defendant will attempt to show that its product is essentially the same as the prior art — and offer the conclusion that either (1) we don’t infringe or (2) the patent is invalid.

Here, the court bolstered its non-infringement conclusion by looking at the patentee’s arguments regarding anticipation. In particular, the patentee argued that the prior art reference (Wright) did not anticipate because it did not disclose turning-off the controller.  The failing of the prior art asserted by the patentee lines up neatly with the failing of the infringement evidence asserted by the accused infringer. “Dali cannot simultaneously argue” both infringement and non-anticipation. Slip Op.

“This case falls squarely within the principle that a ‘patent may not, like a nose of wax, be twisted one way to avoid anticipation and another to find infringement.'”

Quoting Amazon (Fed. Cir. 2021).  See also White v. Dunbar, 119 U.S. 47, 51 (1886) (“Some persons seem to suppose that a claim in a patent is like a nose of wax, which may be turned and twisted in any direction, by merely referring to the specification, so as to make it include something more than, or something different from, what its words express.”)

Justice Joseph Bradley penned his “nose of wax” metaphor in the 1886 decision of White v. Dunbar. By that time, the phrase was already well known. As an American example, the Connecticut Puritan Gershom Berkeley included the following quip in his 1692 book titled Will and Doom: “I think no man should make arbitrary laws, which, like a nose of wax or leaden rule, may be twisted which way a man will.” An earlier use of the idiom may be in Robert Burton’s 1621 book The Anatomy of Melancholy.

To see so many lawyers, advocates, so many tribunals, so little justice; so many magistrates, so little care of common good; so many laws, yet never more disorders . . . to see a lamb executed, a wolf pronounce sentence . . . Laws altered, misconstrued, interpreted pro and con, as the Judge is made by friend; bribed, or otherwise affected as a nose of wax, good today, none tomorrow …

Burton. The earliest pushed form appears to be a 1532 work by William Tyndale — arguing about the improper use of biblical scripture.

Guest post by University of Utah College of Law Professor Jorge L. Contreras. 

The Ninth Circuit’s recent decision in FTC v. Qualcomm (9th Cir., Aug. 11, 2020) is generally viewed as a resounding victory for Qualcomm.  In a strongly worded opinion, the Ninth Circuit reversed the entirety of the district court’s holding, which found that Qualcomm violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.  The Ninth Circuit exonerated Qualcomm with respect to each of its allegedly anticompetitive practices, concluding that these practices merely reflected the flexing of Qualcomm’s “economic muscle” with admirable “vigor, imagination, devotion, and ingenuity” (slip op. at 55).

Among Qualcomm’s challenged practices was its refusal to license rival chip makers under patents that are essential to one or more wireless telecommunications standards (standards-essential patents or SEPs).  While the District Court found that this refusal violated Qualcomm’s antitrust duty to deal under Aspen Skiing Co. v. Aspen Highlands Skiing Corp., 472 U.S. 585 (1985), the Ninth Circuit disagreed.  It reasoned that Qualcomm did not violate any duty to deal because it uniformly refused to grant patent licenses to chip makers and did not “single[] out any specific chip supplier for anticompetitive treatment” (slip op. at 35).

In praising Qualcomm’s egalitarian approach toward rival chip makers, the Ninth Circuit points out that instead of granting licenses to these rivals, Qualcomm merely “declines to enforce its patents” against them “even though they practice Qualcomm’s patents” (id). As such, the Ninth Circuit quips that Qualcomm’s “policy toward rival chipmakers could be characterized as ‘no license, no problem’” (id., emphasis added).  Yet, as I discuss below, this approach could actually be a very big problem, not only for Qualcomm, but for all patent licensors seeking to extract revenue from the most lucrative point in the supply chain.

The Patent Exhaustion Doctrine and Chip Sales

As the Supreme Court explained in Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Elecs., Inc., 553 U.S. 617, 625 (2008), “The longstanding  doctrine of patent exhaustion provides that the initial authorized sale of a patented item terminates all patent rights to that item.”  That is, once the patent holder or its authorized licensee sells a product covered by a patent, that patent can no longer be asserted against a downstream buyer or user of the product. The patent is “exhausted” with respect to that particular product.

In Quanta, LG licensed three patents to Intel.  Intel manufactured chips allegedly covered by the patents, then sold the chips to Quanta for incorporation into Quanta’s PCs. LG then attempted to assert the patents against Quanta.  The court held that so long as the Intel chips “substantially embodied the patent[s]”, they were exhausted upon Intel’s sale of the chips to Quanta (553 U.S. at 633).  LG had no right to assert the patents against Intel’s customer Quanta.

Level Discrimination and SEPs

To grossly oversimplify, the supply chain for standardized wireless telecommunications functionality can be divided into three relevant tiers: (1) standards developers, (2) chip manufacturers, and (3) end user device (e.g., smartphone) manufacturers.  Standards developers like Qualcomm cooperate within standards-development bodies to create telecommunications standards like 4G LTE. Chip manufacturers then implement these standards in chipsets, which they sell to device manufacturers for incorporation into smartphones and other consumer devices.

What happens, however, when a standards developer like Qualcomm holds patents (SEPs) that cover a standard like LTE?  In theory, both the chips embodying the standard and the smartphones incorporating those chips infringe its SEPs.  Thus the SEP holder could choose to license those SEPs at either Tier 2 (chip manufacturers) or Tier 3 (device manufacturers). How to choose?

If a SEP holder licenses a chip manufacturer, then its SEPs covering a particular chip will be exhausted as soon as the manufacturer sell that chip to a device manufacturer, just as LG’s patents were exhausted in Quanta.  This means that if the SEP holder licenses a Tier 2 chip manufacturer, it cannot separately license, or collect royalties from, Tier 3 smartphone manufacturers for the same SEPs.  Qualcomm was keenly aware of the risk of patent exhaustion, which is why it refused to grant “exhaustive” licenses to chip makers like Intel. 411 F.Supp.3d at 748, 761.

If SEP royalties were standardized on a per-unit basis (e.g. $0.50 per product embodying the standard), then it would not matter whether the SEP holder licensed its SEPs at Tier 2 or Tier 3.  In either case it would receive the same payment.  However, due to longstanding industry practice, that is not how SEP royalties are calculated. Instead, they are usually based on some percentage (say 2.5%) of the price of the product embodying the standard.  So for a 4G LTE wireless radio chipset priced at $30, the royalty would be $0.75.  But for a $600 iPhone incorporating that chipset, the royalty would be $15.  For this reason, SEP holders strongly prefer to license their SEPs to end device makers (Tier 3).  As explained by one Ericsson licensing executive, “we choose to license the patents as late in value chain as possible …. One big advantage with this strategy is also that it is likely that the royalty income will be higher since we calculate the royalty on a more expensive product.” Or, as more succinctly expressed by a Qualcomm attorney at trial, licensing SEPs to device makers is “humongously” more lucrative than licensing  them to chip makers. 411 F.Supp.3d at 754, 758, 796.  The practice by which a SEP holder licenses its SEPs at only one tier of the supply chain is sometimes called “level discrimination.” (Courts and commentators disagree whether level discrimination is permitted under the nondiscrimination prong of a FRAND commitment – see this article for a discussion).

Pseudo-Licensing Deals with Chip Makers

If a SEP holder licenses its SEPs at Tier 3, what happens to the Tier 2 chip manufacturer? Does the chip that embodies the standard infringe the SEPs?  Yes, probably. Patent exhaustion only works downstream, not upstream.  That is, a smartphone manufacturer can’t infringe a SEP if it purchases a chipset from a licensed chip maker.  But a chip manufacturer can infringe a SEP even if its customer (the smartphone maker) has a license to use it.  Without a license, the Tier 2 chip maker is exposed to infringement claims by the SEP holder.

So what’s a chip maker to do?  Should it manufacture and sell chipsets that embody a standard even though it knows that it is infringing a host of SEPs?  Wouldn’t this infringement be willful, subjecting the chip maker to a risk of treble damages (see Sec. 5.2.1(1) of this chapter for a discussion of willful infringement of SEPs)?  It seems like an untenable situation for a chip maker.

To address this situation, Qualcomm appears to have developed various strategies.  In the 1990s, it granted chip makers purportedly “non-exhaustive licenses” that permitted them to manufacture chipsets covered by Qualcomm’s SEPs (in exchange for a royalty), but which explicitly excluded any license rights for the purchasers of those chipsets (9^th Cir., slip op. at 14 n.7).  In Quanta, the Supreme Court rejected such a “non-exhaustive” arrangement between LG and Intel, holding that LG’s patent rights were exhausted upon Intel’s sale of covered chips to Quanta.  After this, Qualcomm amended its practices and began to enter into “CDMA ASIC Agreements” with chip makers. Under these agreements, “Qualcomm promises not to assert its patents in exchange for the company promising not to sell its chips to unlicensed [smartphone manufacturers]” (9^th Cir., slip op. at 14, emphasis added).  According to the Ninth Circuit, these agreements “allow Qualcomm’s competitors to practice Qualcomm’s SEPs royalty-free” (id.).  Or, as the court pithily observed, Qualcomm’s “policy toward rival chipmakers could be characterized as ‘no license, no problem’” (id. at 35).

The Ninth Circuit found that because Qualcomm applied its “no license, no problem” policy uniformly toward all rival chip makers, it did not violate the antitrust laws.  But did Qualcomm, instead, open the door to a finding that its patents are exhausted at the chip maker level?

Do SEP Makers Inadvertently Grant Exhaustive Licenses to Chip Makers?

As observed by the Ninth Circuit, Qualcomm “promises not to assert” its SEPs against chip makers.  Its CDMA ASIC Agreements allow chip makers “to practice Qualcomm’s SEPs royalty-free”.  Ericsson, which employs a similar form of level discrimination, has referred to the result as “indirect licensing” of chip manufacturers (see Ericsson v. D-Link, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 110585, *80 (E.D. Tx. 2013)).

In assessing whether a patent has been licensed, courts have generally looked beyond the language used by the parties.  As the Supreme Court reasoned in De Forest Radio Telephone Co. v. United States, 273 U.S. 236, 241 (1927), “No formal granting of a license is necessary in order to give it effect. Any language used by the owner of the patent, or any conduct on his part exhibited to another from which that other may properly infer that the owner consents to his use of the patent in making or using it, or selling it, upon which the other acts, constitutes a license”.

A number of lower court cases have equated a license to a ‘covenant not to sue’.  As the Federal Circuit held in Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp. v. Genetics Institute, Inc., 52 F.3d 1026, 1031 (Fed. Cir. 1995), “A license may amount to no more than a covenant by the patentee not to sue the licensee for making, using or selling the patented invention.”

Given this precedent, SEP holders’ practice of tacitly permitting chip manufacturers to operate under their patents, whether by promising not to assert or “indirectly” licensing, looks suspiciously like licensing.  And, if SEP holders are granting chip manufacturers licenses to make and sell chips under their SEPs, then those SEPs should, by rights, be exhausted upon the sale of those chips to smartphone and other device manufacturers.  And this exhaustion should thereby prevent SEP holders from seeking to license and collect royalties from Tier 3 device manufacturers who incorporate those chips into their smartphones and other products.

This result should come as no surprise to anyone, least of all Qualcomm.  According to the District Court, a Qualcomm executive admitted to the IRS in 2012 that “if Qualcomm licensed a rival [chip manufacturer] … ‘[W]hen [the rival] sell[s] that chip to somebody who’s going to put the chip in a cell phone, okay, the licensee’s sale of that chip will exhaust our rights and then we won’t be able to collect a royalty on a cell phone that’s based on the price of the cellphone’” (411 F.Supp.3d at 796).  When Huawei apparently asserted that Qualcomm’s SEPs were exhausted after selling chips to Huawei, Qualcomm allegedly “threatened to cut off [Huawei’s] chip supply” (id. at 712).

These statements and actions indicate that Qualcomm was well-aware of the threat of patent exhaustion, and actually took measures to avoid the appearance of exhaustion (e.g., by converting its chip maker license agreements into CDMA ASIC Agreements).  Yet in trying to rebut the antitrust allegations made against it, and to overturn the District Court’s antitrust holdings, Qualcomm seems to have persuaded the Ninth Circuit that it effectively grants licenses to rival chip manufacturers. And, in doing so, Qualcomm may have armed its next smartphone licensee with a potent exhaustion defense to any claim of infringement.  Ultimately, “no license, no problem” may cause big problems for Qualcomm and other SEP holders that seek to license only at the most lucrative level of the supply chain.

1. $350 — Roomba: Even a patent attorney can handle this vacuum. Handsfree cleaning that “makes a difference in the lives of people.”
2. $310 — Garmin Nuvi 260 Pocket Vehicle GPS Navigator with Maps for North America. This portable GPS fits in your pocket and works in the car. Voice prompts know streets throughout America.  Although she’s not a patent attorney, I’m getting this for my mother-in-law.
3. $160 — Ipod Nano.
4. $120 — Jawbone: a BlueTooth (wireless) headset for your mobile phone that actually works well. According to reports, the noise cancellation is amazing.  Jawbone self reports the “Highest Rated Bluetooth Headset. Ever.”
5. $100 — Eye-Fi: A 2GB SD card for your camera. The card has a built-in wi-fi chip so that your pictures are wirelessly uploaded to the computer.
6. Pointers: Green laser pointer (no more ugly red). For those of you with romantic delusions, this pointer is strong enough so that the beam can be seen while watching the stars. Perhaps more practical is the wireless presenter (with red laser).
7. $25 —  Blue Oxford Shirt that is both wrinkle free and stain resistant. Patent attorneys have a standard uniform that includes a blue oxford shirt with a button-down collar. Please nothing fancy or shiny.
8. $16 — “Originally developed for the Swedish Department of Defense, Swedish FireSteel is a flash of genius. Its 3,000°C spark makes fire building easy in any weather, at any altitude.” Swedish FireSteel. You may need some MayaDust as well to get the fire started.
9. $15 — Reverse Engineer T-Shirt.
10. Priceless — Several friends suggested the following: new management at the PTO, more technically-trained federal judges, and a Congress that is not for sale. I have been unable to find an appropriate Amazon.com link. Here is one potential solution. ($8).

Bonus Books: Freakonomics; iProperty; Undue Diligence; The Book of Air and Shadows. Happy shopping!

Thanks to all those who contributed ideas!