What I meant to say in the first paragraph was essentially: I do agree that you could seemingly have a situation where FRV -lt MOV, thus invoking the last step and using SRV, but even though SRV -gt FRV is maintained, SRV is also -lt MOV, so the embodiment is inoperable.

Likewise, the second paragraph in essence was: I don’t see anything particularly enlightening about these aspects of the claim in the Markman order or the file history; for the latter, the SRV -gt FRV requirement was part of an amendment to overcome (successfully) a 103 rejection, but the discussion was almost nonexistent.

Finally, in the process of “repairing” this comment, I had occasion to look at the Markman briefing too. VLSI’s brief describes the ‘373 as “providing a minimum operating voltage to a memory even when a dynamic voltage and frequency state selected by the processor calls for a voltage that is lower than that minimum operating voltage.” So I think a possible counter to the inoperability argument would be, given that MOV is established for the memory, it applies to SRV in addition to FRV, and SRV isn’t allowed to undershoot MOV either. Otherwise it seems a little pointless to have something called MOV in the first place.

Some other odd things about the claim are (i) there is no destination for where the SRV is being provided either at Step 8 or in the event Step 9 is followed, and (ii) providing FRV to the functional circuit at the last step would seem redundant because that already happens unconditionally at Step 7.

He has denied it, but there is every reason to believe that he is the very same Ben that upvoted everything that Malcolm posted back in the days when this blog experimented with the format that provided the ability to upvote and downvote (as well as the ability to co-locate posts by the same person).

He is like dealing with MM. A constant irritant that constantly puts out there false statements that you have to refute or risk some newbie believing.

You are just filled with little innuendos and accusations.

The judge to whom I refer to as having a “personality disorder” is one with which I have had personal experiences one-on-one with. So it is not “evidenceless”. And, I know lots of people that have worked with her that have all pretty much said the same thing.

So it seems to me that an embodiment where FRV *and* SRV are both SRV > FRV) is within the literal scope of the claims. Naturally, such an embodiment is non-functional inasmuch as the memory won’t operate below MOV.

Is the full scope of claim 1 enabled since it ensnares embodiments that are non-functional?

A method, comprising:
providing an integrated circuit with a memory;
operating the memory with an operating voltage;
determining a value of a minimum operating voltage of the memory;
providing a non-volatile memory (NVM) location;
storing the value of the minimum operating voltage of the memory in the NVM location;
providing a functional circuit on the integrated circuit exclusive of the memory;
providing a first regulated voltage to the functional circuit;
providing a second regulated voltage, the second regulated voltage is greater than the first regulated voltage;
providing the first regulated voltage as the operating voltage of the memory when the first regulated voltage is at least the value of the minimum operating voltage; and
providing the second regulated voltage as the operating voltage of the memory when the first regulated voltage is less than the value of the minimum operating voltage, wherein while the second regulated voltage is provided as the operating voltage of the memory, the first regulated voltage is provided to the functional circuit.

Yeah, that’s pure BS….

link to patentlyo.com