Trials@uspto.gov Paper # 17
`571-272-7822 Entered: May 11, 2020
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`UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
`_________________________
`
`BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
`__________________________
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`APPLE, INC.,
`Petitioner,
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`v.
`UNILOC 2017 LLC,
`Patent Owner.
`__________________________
`
`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
`__________________________
`
`Record of Remote Oral Hearing
`Held Virtually: Thursday, April 23, 2020
`
`
`BEFORE: SALLY C. MEDLEY, JEFFREY S. SMITH, and GARTH D.
`BAER, ADMINISTRATIVE PATENT JUDGES
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`571-272-7822 Entered: May 11, 2020
`
`
`
`UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
`_________________________
`
`BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
`__________________________
`
`APPLE, INC.,
`Petitioner,
`
`v.
`UNILOC 2017 LLC,
`Patent Owner.
`__________________________
`
`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
`__________________________
`
`Record of Remote Oral Hearing
`Held Virtually: Thursday, April 23, 2020
`
`
`BEFORE: SALLY C. MEDLEY, JEFFREY S. SMITH, and GARTH D.
`BAER, ADMINISTRATIVE PATENT JUDGES
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`
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`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
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`
` A
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` P P E A R A N C E S
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`
`ON BEHALF OF PETITIONER APPLE, INC.:
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`
`
`ON BEHALF OF PATENT OWNER UNILOC 2017 LLC:
`
`
`W. KARL RENNER, ESQUIRE
`JEREMY J. MONALDO, ESQUIRE
`FISH & RICHARDSON, P.C.
`1000 Maine Avenue SW
`Washington, D.C. 20024
`202.783.5070
`renner@fr.com
`monaldo@fr.com
`
`BRETT MANGRUM, ESQUIRE
`ETHERIDGE LAW GROUP
`2600 East Southlake Boulevard
`Suite 120
`Southlake, Texas, 76092
`469.401.2659
`brett@etheridgelaw.com
`
`ALSO PRESENT:
`MATT CLEMENTS, APPLE
`JULIE HAN
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`The above-entitled matter came on for hearing on Thursday, April 23,
`2020, commencing at 2:54 p.m. EST, by video/by telephone.
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`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
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` P R O C E E D I N G S
` JUDGE MEDLEY: This is the hearing for
` IPR 2019-000510 involving U.S. Patent No. 6868079.
` At this time we'd like the parties to please
` introduce counsel for the record, as this is going
` to be a separate transcript from the first hearing
` we just heard, beginning with Petitioner, please.
` MR. RENNER: Your Honor, this is
` Karl Renner, I'm on the record here with
` Jeremy Monaldo, and joining us as well are
` Matt Clements, from Apple, as well as Julie Han,
` from Samsung.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: Great. Thank you so much.
` And for Patent Owner, for the record?
` MR. MANGRUM: Good afternoon, Your Honors,
` again. This is Brett Mangrum, counsel for Patent
` Owner. I will be speaking solely today for Patent
` Owner.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: Okay. Thank you.
` Each party has 45 minutes total time to
` present arguments. Petitioner, you, obviously,
` will proceed first, and you may reserve some of
` your time to respond to arguments presented by
` Patent Owner, and thereafter, Patent Owner, you
` can respond to Petitioner's presentation and may
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` reserve argument time for sur-rebuttal.
` Petitioner, do you wish to reserve time?
` MR. RENNER: Yes, Your Honor. We will
` reserve 15 minutes, please.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: Okay.
` And Patent Owner?
` MR. MANGRUM: Yes, I'd like to reserve
` 10 minutes, please.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: Okay. And if you'll,
` please, just be cognizant of your own time. I
` won't stop you or interrupt you when you're
` presenting.
` So Petitioner, you may begin when you're
` ready.
` MR. RENNER: Thank you, Your Honor.
` Jeremy is going to begin our presentation.
` So Jeremy, please take it away.
` MR. MONALDO: Thank you, Karl, and thank
` you again, Your Honors, for taking the time to be
` with us here today for the virtual hearing. In my
` view and understanding and in combination of
` references set forth in the petition is really key
` to resolving this IPR. So unless Your Honors have
` any questions at the outset, I thought it would be
` productive to start with a discussion of the
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` combination of the Wolfe and Bousquet reference.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: I would like to ask a
` question about claim 18, before we get started.
` I'm under the impression that there was a recent
` federal circuit decision on claim 18, and in that
` decision, they affirm the district court's
` determination that claim 18 is indefinite.
` So my question is: What impact, if any,
` does that determination have on this proceeding?
` MR. MONALDO: I think, Your Honor, that's
` a great question, and I think that is correct that
` claim 18 has been found indefinite by the federal
` circuit. In terms of its impact on this
` proceeding, I think there is still opportunities
` for that decision to be appealed further, but for
` a large matter, it really renders a lot of
` discussion on that claim unnecessary. But what I
` would say is that, in these types of proceedings,
` the federal circuit has informed us and told us --
` and this is a case that came, actually, after our
` Petitioner reply was submitted, the Samsung v
` Prisua Engineering Corporation case, that
` indefinite claims can still be reviewed for
` presentation and obviousness. But I don't want to
` spend a lot of time on claim 18, given the current
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` posture, but I certainly think that decision is
` relevant and something that should be reviewed,
` and, if possible, to take a look at claim 18,
` given its similarity to claim 17, and find it
` obvious for the same reasons as claim 17.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: Well, I understand. I read
` your brief and those cases that you cite, they
` don't -- they aren't directed to means plus
` function claims. So I think when we have a
` means plus function claim, and the claim recites
` insufficient structure, we don't know what the
` structure is and we can't really dive into
` equivalents or obviousness or anything, because at
` that point, we just are kind of -- our reviewing
` court has told us that, too. I mean, that's the
` premise of Donaldson all together. So I think
` it's distinguishable, means plus function claims
` are distinguishable from the cases that you cite
` to us.
` That too, the premise, though, that I
` asked earlier, if the claim has already been ruled
` indefinite by the federal circuit, would it be --
` has Petitioner considered withdrawing its
` challenge with respect to claim 18? It seems like
` it would be sort of a waste of everyone's time at
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`Patent 6,868,079 B1
` this point.
` MR. MONALDO: Yeah, and certainly that
` would be something we could consider. We haven't
` spoken to that with our client on this point, but
` we would be happy to do that and get back to you
` if that would be something of interest.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: That would be great.
` And do you know when you could do that,
` within how many days you could let us know?
` MR. MONALDO: I'm sure -- you know, we
` have three petitioners in this case, so there's a
` little bit of time that would be needed, but I'm
` sure within a week we could know. If you need it
` sooner, we certainly could accommodate that as
` well.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: Okay. And I will ask
` Patent Owner their plans on what they will do
` pending that case. I mean, it was a short
` decision. I don't -- I would imagine that they
` would not file cert or that they would request
` rehearing of that decision, but I will ask at
` their time.
` Okay. Well, thank you.
` You can continue, then, with claim 17.
` MR. MONALDO: Great. Thank you, Your
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` Honor. So moving back to the combination, you see
` on slide 9, the Wolfe reference is the primary
` reference in the combination, which shows you a
` satellite communication with a primary station and
` multiple secondary stations.
` Now, Wolfe Communications Systems uses a
` contention-free TDMA technology where the primary
` station allocates time slots that are -- that the
` secondary stations use to communicate. From
` Wolfe, each secondary station is assigned a time
` slot and the secondary stations transmit it based
` on time. You can see in figure 1 with station 1
` transmitting in time slot TB1, and station 2
` transmitting in time slot TB2, and station N
` transmitting in time slot TBN.
` Now, this allocation of time slot is shown
` in more detail on figure 3, and that's shown on
` slide 10 of our demonstrative, so as shown on
` slide 10, Wolfe's figure 3 shows you time slot
` allocation where each secondary station once again
` is allocated one time slot, TB1 to TBN, in order.
` The secondary stations use these time slots to
` take turns communicating with the primary station
` in a contention-free manner.
` So if there's no questions on Wolfe, I'd
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` like to move to the secondary reference, Bousquet.
` Bousquet is shown on slide 11 of our
` demonstratives. Similar to Wolfe, Bousquet
` describes a satellite communication system that is
` really directed to improving problems with the
` long round-trip delay in satellite communication.
` Bousquet recognized that it takes a relatively
` long time for a sending station to determine
` whether a communication has actually been
` successful. You have to wait for a full round
` trip up to the satellite, down to the sending
` station, back up to the satellite, and back to the
` transmitting station to figure this out.
` Bousquet found this to be a problem in
` attempting to set up a call, because call setup
` could take a relatively long time, and that might
` be undesirable to users.
` To address this problem, Bousquet proposed
` sending the same request multiple times without
` waiting for that round-trip delay for the
` acknowledgment. While this involves increased
` traffic, the multiple requests were deemed
` important because it could increase the likelihood
` that one of them would succeed and call setup
` occurs more quickly in the event that there's an
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` error.
` Now, Bousquet described a primary
` embodiment that uses a contention-based communication
` system, and in this embodiment, Bousquet's
` secondary stations are not applying time slots,
` but instead transmit at random intervals.
` Bousquet's disclosure, however, is not limited to
` this contention-based communication system, and
` describes explicitly that other implementations
` are possible.
` In fact, that's shown in the lowest
` excerpt here on slide 11, Bousquet explicitly
` describes actually increased benefit when the
` stations are temporally synchronized, such as
` Wolfe's. And when we discussed Wolfe and Bousquet
` with our expert, Dr. Steffes, he explained to us
` that there would be multiple reasons why a person
` of skill would have been motivated to apply
` Bousquet's technique in Wolfe's contention-free
` system.
` These reasons are summarized on slide 14,
` and you can see supporting evidence for them on
` slides 15 through 19, but, in our opinion, the
` dispute really focuses on how these references
` would be combined, not whether they would be
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` combined. So unless Your Honors have any
` questions on motivation, I'll plan to jump over to
` slide 20 to discuss the disputed issues.
` So hearing no questions, I'm moving to
` slide 20, and you can see on slide 20 there are
` really two disputed issues. The first is whether
` retransmission in the combination occurs in
` consecutive allocated time slots, and the second
` is whether retransmission occurs until an
` acknowledgment is received.
` Moving to slide 22, you can see Bousquet's
` disclosure reproduced with the lower portion of
` slide 22, and it tells you what Bousquet does is
` it repeats access packet, repetition of the access
` packet. So how do you repeat packets in a system
` such as Wolfe's? You send requests in consecutive
` time slots. You send the first request in the
` first time slot, and then you repeat that same
` request in your next available time slot,
` consecutive time slot.
` Now, to confirm this, we talked to our
` expert, Dr. Steffes, and on slide 23 you can see
` an excerpt of the initial declaration that we put
` forward in the petition. In this excerpt,
` Dr. Steffes concludes that a sending station,
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` Wolfe, would encounter multiple time slots within
` the round-trip delay of the satellite
` communication. It's a delay that we talked about
` with Bousquet and what Bousquet was directed to
` improving.
` And so in coming to this conclusion,
` Dr. Steffes relied on certain facts, and I'd like
` to briefly review them moving to slide 24. You
` can see, in slide 24, the different evidence that
` Dr. Steffes relied on in figuring out how long a
` round trip delay in a satellite communication
` would be. You can see in the lower portion, Wolfe
` talked about a delay approaching one second,
` Bousquet talked about a delay of approximately
` .6 seconds, and Everett, an additional satellite
` reference talked about a single hop of
` approximately 270 milliseconds. So with a single
` hop, you need two of those to complete a round
` trip, and you get to 540 milliseconds. So
` Dr. Steffes, with that information, concluded that
` at least 540 milliseconds, and more likely
` 550 milliseconds, due to some processing delay in
` sending a responsive transmission, would be needed
` for a round trip of a satellite in Wolfe's system.
` Looking at slide 25, you can see Wolfe's
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` frame rate. So we also asked Dr. Steffes, Well,
` how fast are these frames occurring in Wolfe?
` Now, unfortunately, Wolfe doesn't give you an
` exact number, but what Wolfe does disclose -- and
` you can see it on slide 25, the upper row excerpt
` -- that, "The frames repeat often enough that a
` telephone conversation can be made to appear
` continuous and instantaneous."
` So what does that mean? So Dr. Steffes
` looked at telecommunication standards, ITU
` standards, and found that that means you need a
` frame rate of at least 150 milliseconds.
` So moving to slide 26, armed with that
` information, the round trip delay, in the frame
` rate of Wolfe, Dr. Steffes concluded that you have
` at least three packets within that round-trip
` delay, at least three 150 milliseconds-based
` packets in that 550-second round-trip delay
` window.
` And with that, moving to slide 27,
` Dr. Steffes concluded that it would be obvious to
` use consecutive time frames in Wolfe to perform
` Bousquet's retransmission of the same call setup
` request. In fact, Bousquet explicitly describes
` three retransmissions. And to implement three
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` retransmissions in Wolfe's system, you don't
` necessarily use all three frames available to you
` in that round-trip delay. This, necessarily,
` results in retransmission and consecutive time
` frames.
` And also, retransmission in consecutive
` frames just makes sense. You have a limited
` number of opportunities to transmit within that
` round-trip delay in satellite communication, just
` three in Wolfe, and a person of skill would have
` found it obvious to take every opportunity to send
` the repeated request that was available to you and
` transmit in consecutive time frames. And you can
` read the conclusion on slide 27 in Dr. Steffes'
` declaration.
` And, now, unless Your Honors' have any
` questions on this consecutive limitation, I'd like
` to move to the second disputed issue.
` Hearing no questions, I'll move over to
` slide 29. So in slide 29, you can see another
` excerpt from Dr. Steffes' declaration explaining
` typical acknowledgment and retransmission
` operations as understood by a person of skill. As
` shown, a person of ordinary skill in the art would
` have found retransmission actors' failure to
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` receive acknowledgment, an obvious part of the
` acknowledgment processing. This is the entire
` portion of the acknowledgment. To let the sending
` station know whether the transmission was
` correctly received, when it was received and
` acknowledged, no reason to transmit. When the
` communication is not acknowledged, sending station
` knows that an error occurred and a retransmission
` is necessary.
` Slide 34 -- or slide 30, excuse me, shows
` an excerpt from the Everett reference used to
` corroborate Dr. Steffes' opinion. So in slide 30,
` you can see a communication timing diagram that
` shows typical acknowledgment and retransmission
` operations. Now, this is best shown, maybe, by
` looking at remote 2 and remote N in the diagram.
` You can see that remote 2 sends the first
` request up to the hub. That request is
` successfully received and acknowledged, and no
` retransmission occurs for remote 2.
` In contrast, you can see remote N sending
` a first transmission up to the hub, and the
` problem with that transmission is no
` acknowledgment is sent. Remote N then proceeds to
` retransmit that request, that retransmission goes
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` up to the hub, it's acknowledged, and further
` retransmissions are ceased by remote N.
` Now, moving to slide 31, with this
` background of typical acknowledgment processing,
` Dr. Steffes explained how acknowledgments do two
` things for your sending station. They will reveal
` receipt by the reference station, which is right
` there in his declaration, and it causes the
` sending station to forestall additional
` retransmission.
` And you can see that's the conclusion why
` using consecutive time slots and retransmitting
` until acknowledgment is received would have been
` obvious. And that's on slide 32. As we
` discussed, the speed call setup in accordance with
` Bousquet's teachings, a person of skill would use
` all available opportunities within that round-trip
` delay to retransmit the call setup request.
` But a person of ordinary skill would not
` retransmit indefinitely, to do so would waste
` bandwidth. Instead, it would balance those goals
` of maximizing call setup speed, while minimizing
` waste in the bandwidth. A person of skill would
` use all opportunities within that round-trip
` delay, the three opportunities that we discussed
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` in Wolfe, but once that round-trip delay was
` completed and you would expect an acknowledgment
` of your first retransmission to come back, the
` sending station would start checking for
` acknowledgment and the retransmission would stop
` once the acknowledgment was received and the call
` request is known to be successful.
` Very clear, very logical, and supported by
` Dr. Steffes. And, remember, Dr. Steffes is the
` only expert who looked at this who has provided
` testimony on how a person of skill would have
` combined Wolfe and Bousquet.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: Was Dr. Steffes
` cross-examined?
` MR. MONALDO: No, he was not.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: Thank you.
` MR. MONALDO: And so at this point I
` thought it might be productive to take a look at
` one of Patent Owner's slides, actually slide 4 of
` Patent Owner's demonstratives. So the quote that
` the Bousquet referenced, I thought, warranted some
` discussion, and that's the lowermost quote on
` slide 4, Patent Owner's demonstrative. It says
` here, Bousquet further discloses that the
` invention proposes to send the same access package
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` in time and greater than one in a given time
` period, whether an acknowledgment message is
` received from the station to which these packets
` are sent or not.
` So Patent Owner is arguing that Bousquet
` doesn't care about acknowledgments. They keep
` their transmissions going, even if a request or
` acknowledgment is actually received from the
` recipient device. Well, we have a few responses
` to that. One, Bousquet's disclosure is not that
` limited. There are other portions of Bousquet
` that aren't limited to this specific sentence.
` Additionally, as we just discussed,
` Dr. Steffes gave you a great reason why you would
` stop retransmission when you received an
` acknowledgment and continue retransmitting until
` you do so. Even if this was the only disclosure
` in Wolfe, we certainly think that that explanation
` on typical acknowledgment processing was
` reasonable, and certainly is obvious to implement
` it in the way that Dr. Steffes explained, but
` importantly, Uniloc actually takes this quote out
` of context.
` I'd like to turn you to Bousquet, Bousquet
` column 2, specifically, column 2, lines 53 to 56.
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`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
` Those lines include the quote we just read. The
` quote that, In a given time period, whether an
` acknowledgment message is received from the
` station to which these packets are sent or not.
` Now, let's look at the following sentence
` that are lines 57 to 59. The transmission is done
` within a time period less than that required for a
` round trip of a packet between the calling station
` and the called station. I quote it's, "Less than
` the time" -- "The transmission is less than the
` time required for the round trip of the packet."
` So because the transmission occurs within
` that window, you never expect to receive any
` acknowledgment. So the prior statement that
` Uniloc references is simply not telling you that
` you would ignore acknowledgment, rather, the
` transmission is done within the period where you'd
` never expect any acknowledgment to be received.
` We talked about it with our expert, and
` our expert said, When looking at that in context,
` that statement is not telling you to ignore
` acknowledgment, it's not telling you to keep
` retransmitting whether you get one or not, it's
` telling you, you transmit without waiting for
` acknowledgment and then [indiscernible] what
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`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
` happens when that acknowledgment actually is
` received after that round-trip delay occurred.
` Also, at pages 20 and 21 of the decision,
` it's recognized that Bousquet alone was not relied
` on for this feature, it's really a combination of
` Wolfe and Bousquet with the knowledge of a person
` of skill as evidenced by Everett. Now, we
` certainly appreciate the plenary nature of
` institutional decisions, how these decisions
` should be reconsidered after development of a full
` record, and that's the entire point of an IPR
` trial.
` Here, Uniloc did not seek an advantage of
` the trial, Uniloc has not submitted any
` substantive evidence, no expert testimony. As
` Judge Medley, you just mentioned, Uniloc didn't
` depose our expert, Dr. Steffes. If the Uniloc
` arguments sounds similar, that's because they are.
` If you look at Uniloc's preliminary response, the
` exact same arguments were raised in the
` preliminary response that are being put forward in
` the Patent Owner's response.
` If you compare pages 9 through 16 of
` Uniloc's preliminary response, and pages
` 9 through 12 of Uniloc's patent owner response,
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`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
` the arguments are just reproduced, nearly
` verbatim. The only addition is a half-page
` argument from page 12, line 21, to page 13,
` line 12, in which Uniloc merely expresses
` disagreement with the institution decision without
` providing any additional arguments, much less
` evidence, of why that decision was correct.
` So with this response, Uniloc has not even
` provided additional attorney arguments that would
` impact the reasonable likelihood of success found
` in the institutional decision. From this record,
` Uniloc has really given Your Honors no reason to
` reconsider or revisit the analysis of the
` institution decision, and did nothing to refute
` the testimony from Dr. Steffes that these
` combination of references would have led a person
` of skill to find it obvious that retransmission
` occurs in consecutive time slots until an
` acknowledgment is received.
` I would like to pause there to see if
` there are any questions on the Wolfe and Bousquet
` combination before moving to Everett.
` All right. So hearing no questions, I'll
` just briefly discuss Everett, and this is
` Ground 2. Moving to our slide 36, Everett shows
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`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
` similar satellite system to Wolfe and Bousquet.
` Moving to slide 38, Everett provides the explicit
` teaching of a feature that Uniloc is contending is
` actually from the prior art. The satellite will
` retransmit its first request and continue doing so
` until it receives an acknowledgment.
` So if there's any doubt that that feature
` is not part of a person's skill or knowledge, it's
` shown in Everett that's it's part of the
` combination that's readily combinable with Wolfe
` and Bousquet, it simply provides detail of
` satellite communication that was so well known
` that they were just not discussed in Wolfe and
` Bousquet.
` Are there any questions --
` JUDGE MEDLEY: So I have a question --
` MR. MONALDO: Yes?
` JUDGE MEDLEY: For purposes of our final
` decision when we're grappling with these two
` separate grounds, if we were to find that, let's
` say Ground 2 is persuasive to us, do we need to
` make a determination with respect to Ground 1
` also?
` MR. MONALDO: No, Your Honor. I don't
` think you need to resolve both grounds to
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`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
` completely resolve this case. I think both
` grounds, as long as the claim is not unpatentable,
` are sufficient to do so and a finding on one would
` be sufficient. That said, I think both grounds
` are perfectly reasonable and both grounds would be
` certain to render the claim unpatentable and
` obvious in the combination directly.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: So if you were to pick
` which of the stronger ground, which ground would
` you say is the stronger ground?
` MR. MONALDO: You know, I don't know that
` there's much of a difference between the two
` grounds in that the Everett reference is just
` providing corroboration of the testimony offered
` by Dr. Steffes, because that testimony has not
` been contested, there's been no deposition, no
` competing testimony. I think that testimony is
` very clean, very strong, but if you want to look,
` and you need explicit disclosure of this feature,
` the Everett ground might be stronger in that
` regard because it does tell you that the
` acknowledgment processing that Dr. Steffes
` confirmed in his declaration is as we said it.
` JUDGE MEDLEY: Okay. Thank you.
` MR. MONALDO: Certainly.
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`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
` So briefly moving to slide 44, the
` addition of Patsiokas to the combination. Now,
` transitioning over to slide 45, you can see an
` excerpt of the summary of Patsiokas' invention.
` And here you can see the summary, it says a base
` station receives a, "...channel request signal,
` measures the received signal strength level of the
` received signal, and if that level is above a
` first threshold level, a communication channel is
` granted to the requesting unit." Clear undisputed
` disclosure of the signal strength limitation in
` the claim.
` In the petition, Dr. Steffes provided
` several reasons why a person of skill would have
` been inclined to include the signal strength
` feature in Wolfe, these are shown in slide 48 of
` our demonstratives.
` The first you see to establish and
` maintain a reliable call connection, you would
` check your signal strength, the threshold level
` that you have, to ensure your connecting call has
` a strength that would be reliable.
` Second, you would consider this to avoid
` or reduce the number of dropped calls. If you
` complete a call that is of questionable signal
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`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
` strength, it is a more higher likelihood of it
` being dropped, but by requiring the signal
` strength in the system to check before allowing a
` call to be completed, you've reduced the
` likelihood of dropped calls.
` And, finally, just a well-known technique,
` thresholds like this have been used in
` communication technology for a long time. You
` obviously want to check to make sure the signal
` you're connecting has the strength, that it's
` sufficient to do what you want it to do. A
` knowing force, so to speak, just to make sure
` you're weeding out things that are unintended.
` Now, the dispute over the patent really
` involves whether a person of skill would have used
` the terrestrial communication techniques of
` Patsiokas in satellite systems, such as Wolfe and
` Bousquet. And we asked the same question when
` preparing the petition, and discussed it at length
` with our expert, Dr. Steffes, and what we learned
` was that it was common for a person of skill to
` borrow techniques from terrestrial systems and use
` them in satellite systems, and vice versa.
` The fact of the matter is, that
` terrestrial and satellite systems are quite
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`Case IPR2019-00510
`Patent 6,868,079 B1
` similar. The difference is that terrestrial
` systems use towers for communication, and
` satellite systems use the satellite, which is,
` effectively, just a very tall tower.
` Now, these similarities, Dr. Steffes
` confirmed that would have been natural and obvious
` for a person of skill to implement the techniques
` of Patsiokas in the satellite system. You can see
` on slides 55 and 56 additional evidence to support
` Dr. Steffes. You see in slide 55 a textbook
` excerpt from a telecommunication textbook.
` "Satellite communication overlap terrestrial
` microwave technology to a large extent." It's
` right there in corroborating evidence from
` Dr. Steffes to rely on.
` But 56 shows you an Iridium publication
` that talks about cellular and satellite systems
` interacting. And if you look at the upper right
` portion of this evidence, you see it's still just
` an idea. A cellular system with very tall towers
` called satellites. Perfectly reasonable for a
` person of skill to borrow from these two types of
` technologies. And, again
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