Apple Inc. v. Gesture Technology Partners, LLC

127 F.4th 364
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
DecidedJanuary 27, 2025
Docket23-1501
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 127 F.4th 364 (Apple Inc. v. Gesture Technology Partners, LLC) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Apple Inc. v. Gesture Technology Partners, LLC, 127 F.4th 364 (Fed. Cir. 2025).

Opinion

Case: 23-1501 Document: 66 Page: 1 Filed: 01/27/2025

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________

APPLE INC., Appellant

LG ELECTRONICS INC., LG ELECTRONICS USA, INC., GOOGLE LLC, Appellees

v.

GESTURE TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS, LLC, Cross-Appellant ______________________

2023-1501, 2023-1554 ______________________

Appeals from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in Nos. IPR2021- 00921, IPR2022-00092, IPR2022-00362. ______________________

Decided: January 27, 2025 ______________________

ROBERT MANHAS, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, Washington, DC, argued for appellant, appellees. Appel- lant also represented by MELANIE L. BOSTWICK; CLIFFORD T. BRAZEN, ADAM PRESCOTT SEITZ, Erise IP, P.A., Overland Park, KS; PAUL R. HART, Denver, CO.

STANLEY JOSEPH PANIKOWSKI, III, DLA Piper LLP (US), San Diego, CA, for appellees LG Electronics Inc., LG Case: 23-1501 Document: 66 Page: 2 Filed: 01/27/2025

Electronics USA, Inc. Also represented by MATTHEW D. SATCHWELL, Chicago, IL.

ERIKA ARNER, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP, Washington, DC, for appellee Google LLC. Also represented by DANIEL COOLEY, Reston, VA.

JOHN WITTENZELLNER, Williams Simons & Landis PLLC, Philadelphia, PA, argued for cross-appellant. Also represented by ERIC CARR, MARK JOHN EDWARD MCCARTHY, FRED WILLIAMS, Austin, TX. ______________________

Before LOURIE, DYK, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges. DYK, Circuit Judge. In this inter partes review proceeding (“IPR”), the Pa- tent Trial and Appeal Board (the “Board”) determined that claims 1–3, 5–10, and 12–17 of U.S. Patent No. 8,878,949 (the “’949 patent”) were unpatentable, but it determined that claims 4, 11, and 18 were not shown to be unpatenta- ble. Patent owner Gesture Technology Partners, LLC (“Gesture”) cross-appeals the Board’s unpatentability find- ings as to claims 1–3, 5–10, and 12–17, 1 and IPR petitioner Apple Inc. (“Apple”) appeals the Board’s findings as to claims 4, 11, and 18. We limit our discussion to claims 1– 7 because we have separately affirmed the Board’s decision holding claims 8–18 unpatentable in its ex parte reexami- nation decision In re Gesture Tech. Partners, No. 2023-001857, Reexamination No. 90/014,903 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 8, 2023). See In re Gesture Tech. Partners, LLC, No. 24-1038, slip op. at 2 (Fed. Cir. 2025) (nonprecedential).

1 LG Electronics Inc., LG Electronics USA, Inc., and Google LLC are appellees in Gesture’s cross-appeal, as well. See Appellant’s Reply Br. at 4 n.1. Case: 23-1501 Document: 66 Page: 3 Filed: 01/27/2025

APPLE INC. v. GESTURE TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS, LLC 3

We affirm the Board’s determination that claims 1–3 and 5–7 are unpatentable and reverse the Board’s determina- tion that claim 4 is not unpatentable. We also reject Ges- ture’s suggestion that the Board lacks jurisdiction in IPRs over patents after their expiration. BACKGROUND Gesture owns the ’949 patent, entitled “Camera Based Interaction and Instruction,” which is directed to image capture technology. ’949 patent describes a portable device that uses an electro-optical sensor to scan the field of vision and detect a user command, i.e., a gesture. When the de- vice detects a gesture, its processing unit controls a digital camera to capture a digital image. Claim 1 is exemplary as to the claims in Gesture’s cross-appeal and recites: A portable device comprising: a device housing including a forward facing portion, the forward facing portion of the device housing encompassing an electro-optical sen- sor having a field of view and including a digi- tal camera separate from the electrooptical sensor; and a processing unit within the device housing and operatively coupled to an output of the electro- optical sensor, wherein the processing unit is adapted to: determine a gesture has been performed in the electro-optical sensor field of view based on the electro-optical sensor output, and control the digital camera in response to the gesture performed in the electro-optical sensor field of view, wherein the gesture corresponds to an image capture command, and wherein the image capture command causes the digital camera to store an image to memory. Case: 23-1501 Document: 66 Page: 4 Filed: 01/27/2025

’949 patent, col. 15, ll. 21–38. Claim 4 depends from claim 1 and requires the electro-optical sensor to be “fixed” in relation to the digital camera:

The portable device of claim 1 wherein the elec- tro-optical sensor is fixed in relation to the dig- ital camera. ’949 patent, col. 15, ll. 43–44. In June 2021, Apple filed an IPR petition for the then- expired ’949 patent, asserting that each of its claims was unpatentable as obvious over U.S. Patent No. 6,144,366 (“Numazaki”) and Japanese Patent Application No. H4- 73631 (“Nonaka”). Numazaki discloses an “information in- put generation apparatus” that detects subjects using a “reflected light extraction unit” and “visible light photo-de- tection array,” J.A. 959, and Nonaka discloses a camera that captures images when an equipped remote release de- vice detects a user command. Apple argued that Nonaka suggested combining three of Numazaki’s embodiments to arrive at a portable device that captures video images in response to detecting prede- termined gestures. Apple further argued that Numazaki’s light extraction unit is fixed in relation to its photo-detec- tion array. The Board concluded that Apple had demon- strated that claims 1–3 and 5–7 are unpatentable as obvious but not claim 4, finding that Numazaki does not disclose the “fixed” limitation. Apple appeals, and Gesture cross-appeals. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A). DISCUSSION “Obviousness is a mixed question of fact and law.” No- vartis AG v. Torrent Pharms. Ltd., 853 F.3d 1316, 1327 (Fed. Cir. 2017). We review the Board’s legal conclusion of obviousness de novo and its factual findings for substantial evidence. Okajima v. Bourdeau, 261 F.3d 1350, 1354 Case: 23-1501 Document: 66 Page: 5 Filed: 01/27/2025

APPLE INC. v. GESTURE TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS, LLC 5

(Fed. Cir. 2001). We interpret claim terms by looking to their ordinary meaning in light of the specification and prosecution history. Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1315–17 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc); Vasudevan Software, Inc. v. MicroStrategy, Inc., 782 F.3d 671, 677 (Fed. Cir. 2015). I Gesture argues that the Board could not exercise juris- diction over this IPR because the ’949 patent expired in May 2020, before Apple filed its petition in June 2021. Ac- cording to Gesture, this is because the Supreme Court’s de- cision in Oil States Energy Services, LLC v. Greene’s Energy Group, LLC, 584 U.S. 325 (2018), explained that the “deci- sion to grant a patent is . . . the grant of a public franchise,” Cross-Appellant’s Br. 42 (quoting Oil States, 584 U.S. at 334–35), and once a patent expires “the public franchise ceases to exist and the patent owner no longer has the right to exclude others,” id. at 43.

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