Apple Inc. v. Smart Mobile Technologies LLC

Summary

The court affirmed the Board’s determination that Apple failed to prove certain claims unpatentable because the claimed “multiplexed signals” require combining multiple signal streams into a composite signal transmitted simultaneously over one shared pathway, and the cited references did not disclose that limitation. The court vacated the Board’s obviousness determination for other claims because the Board failed to address Smart Mobile’s evidence that the proposed combination would create a data-transmission bottleneck and incorrectly stated that Smart Mobile had not responded to Apple’s motivation-to-combine argument. The matter was remanded for the Board to reconsider the motivation to combine and weigh the benefits and detriments of the proposed combination.