Ancora Technologies, Inc. v. Roku, Inc., et al., Nos. 2023-1674, -1701 (Fed. Cir. (PTAB) June 16, 2025). Per curiam opinion, before Louri, Reyna, and Hughes.
Ancora owns a patent directed to restricting unauthorized use of licensed software programs on computers. Roku and Nintendo filed IPR petitions against that patent. The Board issued two final written decisions finding certain claims of the patent unpatentable as obvious. Ancora appealed both decisions.
The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded. Ancora argued on appeal that (1) the Board erred in construing the term “agent”; (2) even if the Board correctly construed “agent,” the Board nonetheless erred in determining obviousness; and (3) the Board erred in its analysis of secondary considerations of nonobviousness.
The Federal Circuit rejected Ancora’s first two arguments. First, the court held that the Board correctly determined that there was no lexicography or disavowal of the term “agent” such that the term should be limited to use at the OS-level or in software only. Rather, the court agreed with the Board that extrinsic evidence supported a broader definition of simply a “software program or routine.” Second, determining that substantial evidence supported the Board’s underlying findings of fact, the court agreed with what was in effect a prima facie determination of obviousness by the Board based on two prior art references.
But the Federal Circuit agreed with Ancora’s third argument—holding that the Board’s findings regarding the license evidence Ancora offered as objective indicia of nonobviousness were legal error. Specifically, the court determined that the Board applied too exacting of a nexus standard.
The Federal Circuit explained that the nexus standard for “license” evidence differs from the standard required for “products” or other forms of objective evidence of nonobviousness. Namely, the court clarified that “[u]nlike products, which may incorporate numerous features beyond those claimed or described in a patent and therefore may require careful parsing to establish a nexus, actual licenses to the subject patent do not demand the same, as they are, by their nature, directly tied to the patented technology.”
Applying the correct standard, the Federal Circuit reasoned that the licensing evidence presented—including settlements taken “after four years of litigation, within one month of trial, and one day before trial”—supports a nexus finding. The Federal Circuit explained that “when it comes to licenses, clear evidence that substantial license fees were paid for licenses to a specific patent late in a litigation should be given the significance that their magnitude deserves.” The Federal Circuit also noted that the Board misread the first license. The court thus concluded that the Board’s findings related to objective indicia of nonobviousness constituted legal error and were not supported by substantial evidence.
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Optis Cellular Technology, LLC, et al. v. Apple Inc., Nos. 2022-1904, -1925 (Fed. Cir. (E.D. Tex.) June 16, 2025). Opinion by Prost, joined by Reyna and Stark.
Optis Cellular owns certain standard-essential patents related to the LTE telecommunication standard. Optis sued Apple on its products that implement the LTE standard, such as various Apple iPhones, iPads, and Watches. In a first trial, the jury found that the products infringed and awarded Optis $506,200,000. Apple moved for a new trial, which the court granted as to damages only. In the second trial, the jury awarded Optis $300,000,000. Apple appealed.
The Federal Circuit vacated both the infringement finding and the damages judgment from the second trial and remanded for proceedings consistent with its opinion. The Federal Circuit further affirmed and reversed on certain substantive issues.
On appeal, Apple argued that the verdict form given to the jury—which included a single question as to infringement covering all asserted patents—violated its right to a unanimous verdict because it “permitted the jury to find Apple liable for infringement regardless of whether all jurors agreed that Apple was infringing the same patent.” Specifically, the verdict form included only a single question related to infringement: “Did Optis prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Apple infringed ANY of the Asserted Claims?”
The Federal Circuit agreed with Apple, holding that the “district court abused its discretion by asking a single infringement question covering five asserted patents.” The Federal Circuit explained that the “problem with the district court’s single infringement question is that it deprived Apple of its right to a unanimous verdict on each legal claim against it related to infringement.” “As long as each juror believed some claim of some patent was infringed, the jury was required to answer ‘Yes’—even if the various jurors believed that Apple was infringing a different asserted patent.”
Because the Federal Circuit held that a new trial on infringement was required, the court also vacated the award of $300,000,000. The Federal Circuit noted that although there was a separate damages trial, the jury was instructed at the damages trial that all five patents were infringed—a finding it had just vacated.
The Federal Circuit then separately addressed (1) whether the district court correctly held certain claims are not directed to an abstract idea; (2) whether the district court correctly construed a certain claim; and (3) whether one of the claims invokes § 112 ¶ 6.
Starting with patent eligibility, the Federal Circuit explained that the claims in question “are directed to using an equation to calculate the start position from which a UE, such as a mobile device, will begin searching for information to decode in a control channel of a cellular network.” The claims at issue recite a mathematical equation, which is the purported advancement over the prior art. The Federal Circuit concluded that the claims are directed to the abstract idea of a mathematical formula, and thus reversed at step one of Alice. The court remanded as to step two.
Next, relying on the plain claim language, the Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s claim construction that the claim language “the ACK/NACK control signals overwrite some of the multiplexed signals mapped to the 2-dimensional resource matrix from the last row of the specific columns” requires only that the system map cells in the last row.
Third, the Federal Circuit considered whether the term “selecting unit” invoked § 112 ¶ 6. The Federal Circuit explained that the term “unit” “does not sufficiently connote structure and is similar to other terms that we have held to be nonce terms similar to ‘means.’” The Federal Circuit thus concluded that “selecting unit” invokes § 112 ¶ 6 and remanded for the district court to consider whether the specification discloses adequate corresponding structure.
Finally, the Federal Circuit considered whether the district court abused its discretion under FRE 403 by admitting into evidence an Apple-Qualcomm settlement agreement and Optis’s damages expert’s testimony concerning that agreement. In concluding that it did, the Federal Circuit explained that the “agreement is not the most reliable license in the record, and its probative value appears minimal” at least because the “scope of the patent rights under the settlement agreement was far greater than the hypothetical license to the five asserted patents in this case, and the agreement settled global litigation between Apple and Qualcomm, including matters spanning patent, antitrust, tortious-interference, and trade-secret claims.” The Federal Circuit also noted that “it was highly prejudicial to Apple for Optis (and Mr. Kennedy) to repeatedly recite the large settlement figure given ‘the probative value of the [AppleQualcomm settlement agreement] is dubious.’”
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Realtek Semiconductor Corp. v. ITC, No. 2023-1187 (Fed. Cir. (ITC) June 18, 2025). Opinion by Bryson, joined by Reyna and Stoll.
MediaTek and Future Link entered into an agreement whereby MediaTek agreed to pay Future Link a lump sum if it filed a lawsuit against Realtek. Future Link subsequently filed an ITC proceeding against Realtek, accusing Realtek of patent infringement. After entering into a separate settlement agreement that Future Link believed resolved the underlying dispute, Future Link informed Realtek of the agreement between it and MediaTek. Realtek then filed a motion for sanctions based on this agreement.
Though the ALJ expressed “alarm” over this agreement, the ALJ nonetheless concluded that sanctions were not warranted at least because the evidence showed that the agreement played no role in Future Link’s decision to file suit against Realtek. Shortly thereafter, Future Link withdrew its complaint against Realtek and moved to terminate the investigation. Realtek appealed just the denial of its sanctions request.
The Federal Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction to hear Realtek’s appeal. The court explained that its jurisdiction is limited to certain appealable final determinations by the ITC listed in 19 U.S.C. § 1337(c). The court explained that the list of appealable subsections includes only subsections (d), (e), (f), or (g) —which deal with the exclusion of articles from the United States. The section related to sanctions—subsection (h)—is not included in that list. Because the ITC’s denial of Realtek’s motion for sanctions was not an appealable final determination under § 1337(c), the Federal Circuit concluded that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the appeal.
The Federal Circuit added that in some cases it may have jurisdiction over ancillary issues so long as they are necessary for the proper consideration of a final determination under subsections (d), (e), (f), or (g). But here, the court explained that Realtek’s appeal of just its sanctions request was not ancillary to any appealable final determination.
Finally, the court recognized that its decision left open the question of which court has jurisdiction to review the sanctions decision. To this, it directed Realtek to the district court, explaining that “the normal default rule is that persons seeking review of agency action go first to district court rather than to a court of appeals.”
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