Koninklijke Philips N.V. v. Google, LLC, No. 19-1177 (Fed. Cir. 2020)
Annotate this CaseKoninklijke's patent identifies prior art technologies for delivering digital content for playback on a client device: downloading and streaming. It states that downloading suffers from delay because the user cannot playback the digital content until after the entire file finishes downloading; streaming generally requires “two-way intelligence” and a “high level of integration between client and server software,” which “mostly excludes third parties from developing custom server software.” On Google’s petition, the Patent Board instituted inter partes review (IPR) and construed the claim term “a given segment of [a/the] media presentation” to mean “a media presentation with multiple segments.” The Board concluded that Google had not demonstrated that any of the claims were anticipated but that Google had demonstrated that claims 1–11 would have been obvious. The Federal Circuit affirmed, first holding that the Board erred by instituting IPR of claims 1–11 based on obviousness over two prior references because Google did not advance such a combination of references in its petition. The Board did not violate 35 U.S.C. 311(b) or the IPR statute in determining that the claims would have been obvious over a prior reference in light of the general knowledge of a skilled artisan. The Board’s factual findings underlying its obviousness determination are supported by substantial evidence.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.