Company that filed the case: Advanced Micro Devices launched a suit in California federal court in March 2014 alleging LG Electronics Inc. infringed nine patents belonging to the processor maker and its ATI Technologies ULC unit. The allegedly infringing products in the nine-strong patent row include LG televisions, smartphones, tablets, Blu-ray players, projectors and appliances that embody or practice the patented inventions
Accused Company: LG Electronics Inc. challenged that the case claiming that the patents were invalid because of prior art references.
Patent Details: One of the patents that was recently reviewed in the case was U.S. Patent Number 7,742,053 B2 , which described a "multi-thread graphic processing system comprising of at least one memory device storing a plurality of pixel command threads and a plurality of vertex command threads."
After an investigation undertaken by The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), it was found that patent for graphics processing was unpatentable because the claims were obvious or anticipated at the time of filing. At issue were patent claims 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7, according to the decision that was published.
Let's look at one of the claims (Claim 1):
A graphics processing system comprising:
at least one memory device comprising a first portion operative to store a plurality of pixel command threads and a second portion operative to store a plurality of vertex command threads; and
an arbiter, coupled to the at least one memory device, operable to select a command thread from either of the plurality of pixel command threads and the plurality of vertex command threads based on relative priorities of the plurality of pixel command threads and the plurality of vertex command threads.
As mentioned above, the patent was challenged by LG and was deemed unpatentable because prior art references — referred to as Stuttard, Moreton, Whittaker and Lindholm — rendered them obvious or anticipated. This was an important win in LG's effort to combat an infringement lawsuit over multiple patents chipmaker AMD.
Although I do not understand the technicality of the claim, the case does demonstrate the importance of prior art references, obviousness, and anticipation that we learnt in class, and so I decided to write about it.
Srushti,
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is very important to do research on prior art when writing up your patent. If one does their research, they are able to differentiate their claims from previous ones and thus get approved as opposed to rejected as obvious.
Nice post, Srushti! I like how you laid out this post--I think I will take a similar approach in my next post in regard to how you organized the facts. I also think you did a good job relating what we've learned in class to this specific class; you incorporated your knowledge of obviousness and explained how LG used the concept of invalidity as its defense against AMD Graphics. I also agree that it is very important for a company to do research on prior art before writing up one of its patents... Companies seem to get screwed on this pretty often. Nice job!
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ReplyDeleteSrushti! Nice post, This was a great overall summary and appears to be a textbook Smartphone Patent Case involving a small firm, AMD, and a large firm LG, that use to have massive market share. Further, the fact that obviousness, prior art, and anticipation were all covered validates this great case further. Awesome post and great summary!
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