In In re Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC, [2016-1173] (May 5, 2017), the Federal Circuit affirmed the Board’s decision that §317(b) did not bar the reexamination and that the reexamined claims were invalid.

Affinity sued Apple for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,440,772, and Apple requested reexamination of the ‘772 Patent. Apple and Affinity settled the lawsuit and filed a joint stipulation of dismissal. Apple also filed a notice of non-participation in the reexamination, and Affinity petitioned to terminate the reexamination under 35 U.S.C. § 317(b), which prohibits the USPTO from maintaining an Inter Partes reexamination after the party who requested the reexamination has received a final decision against it in a civil action. The USPTO denied Affinity’s petition because because the district court’s dismissal, without prejudice did not meet section 317(b)’s required condition for terminating the reexamination. The reexamination resulted in invalidation of all of the claims, which was affirmed by the PTAB.

The claims included a dual download feature, inter alia, requiring:

"in response to receiving the request, making a first version of the piece of selectable content available for downloading to the wireless user device and a second version of the piece of selectable content available for downloading to a personal computer of the user, wherein the first version has the specific format and the second version has a different format playable by the personal computer; sending the first version of the piece of selectable content to the wireless user device; and sending the second version of the piece of selectable content to the personal computer."

Affinity argued that the two sending steps must occur automatically, without intervening steps, after the “in response to” language. The Federal Circuit disagreed, noting that each of the five steps of method claim 4 — including the three steps of the dual download feature — are offset by semicolons. The Federal Circuit said: “This punctuation choice strongly indicates that each step is separate and distinct.” It would, therefore, be reasonable to conclude the fourth and fifth steps — the sending steps — are not tied to the “making . . . available” step and not performed “in response to” the same request found in the “making . . . available” step, as Affinity argued. The Federal Circuit also found that while portions of specification were consistent with automatically downloading, they certain did not require it, and in fact some embodiments did not have automatic downloads. The Federal Circuit thus affirmed the broad claim construction by the Board, and the invalidation of those broad claims.

Because the Federal Circuit agreed that the estoppel provision of § 317(b) did not prohibit the PTO from maintaining the reexamination of the ’772 Patent’s claims, and the Board’s construction of the claims was consistent with the broadest reasonable interpretation, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Board’s decision.