Takeaway: An indefinite article “a” or “an” in a patent claim typically means “one or more” in open-ended claims containing the transitional phrase “comprising.”

In its Decision, the Board denied the Petition and did not institute inter partes review of the ’750 patent.  According to the Board, Petitioner had not shown that there was a reasonable likelihood that it would prevail with respect to at least one of claims 8-14 as challenged in the Petition.

The ’750 patent relates to computer memory access utilizing a translation lookaside buffer (“TLB”) provided for each of multiple instruction pipelines. As characterized by the Board, “[a] TLB is a component of an address translator that translates virtual addresses to physical addresses.”

Petitioner had challenged claims 8-14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) in view of a proposed combination of certain Applicant Admitted Prior Art (AAPA) and the prior art ’926 patent. Petitioner had also challenged claim 8 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) in view of Clipper.

Because the ’750 patent is expired, the Board construed the claims under the Phillipsstandard, i.e., in accordance with the ordinary and customary meanings of the terms of the claims, as would be understood by a person of ordinary skill in the art, in the context of the specification.  Applying this standard, the Board construed the recited term “direct address translation unit,” finding that “to be covered by claim 8, a method must activate a single DTU to translate virtual addresses from both a first pipeline associated with a first TLB and a second pipeline associated with a second TLB” and that “[i]t is not enough to show a first DTU that translates a first virtual address and a second DTU that translates a second virtual address.”  The Board did not expressly construe any other claim limitation other than this one.

As for Petitioner’s assertion that claims 8–14 would have been obvious in view of AAPA and the ’926 patent, the Board determined that Petitioner had not persuasively shown that either of the ’926 patent or AAPA described a direct address translation unit as recited in independent claim 8. In this respect, the Board agreed with Patent Owner’s argument that the ’926 patent does not detail how its system resolves TLB misses.  Moreover, the Board agreed with Patent Owner’s contention that at least some of Petitioner’s arguments were based on impermissible hindsight.

In addressing Petitioner’s contention that claim 8 was anticipated by Clipper, the Board determined that Clipper did not disclose “a single DTU that translates virtual addresses for the TLBs of both CAMMU modules” (“[b]ecause each CAMMU module includes its own DTU”). This led the Board to conclude that Clipper did not teach the direct address translation unit recited in claim 8.

Texas Instruments Inc. v. Vantage Point Technology, Inc., IPR2014-01105
Paper 8: Decision Denying Institution of Inter Partes Review 
Dated: January 5, 2015 
Patent 5,463,750
Before: Bryan F. Moore, Hyun J. Jung, and David C. McKone 
Written by: McKone
Related Proceedings: Several lawsuits filed by Patent Owner asserting the ’750 patent against various companies – including Petitioner – in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas