NFC Techoloty, LLC v. Matal

NFC’s patent relates to a near-field communication device, using electromagnetic induction to communicate information over very short distances. The patent claims a priority date of March 1999, the date of the filing of a French patent application. HTC sought inter partes review, alleging that claims were unpatentable as obvious over the Sears patent, with a filing date of February 1999. NFC responded that the inventor, Charrat, had reduced the invention to practice before Sears’s priority date. By September 1998, NFC claimed, Charrat and his team had sufficiently developed the device that they commissioned CE, a chip fabrication company, to generate printed circuit board layouts for the device. The Patent Board determined that NFC had not adequately demonstrated that Charrat had reduced the invention to practice before Sears’s priority date; even if the prototype embodied the invention, NFC had not adequately established that Charrat had conceived the claims' subject matter. The Federal Circuit reversed and remanded. Charrat’s testimony relating to conception was adequately corroborated by NFC’s documentary evidence. NFC established conception. The Board assumed, but did not decide, that the prototype embodied the claimed invention; that issue must be decided in order to determine whether Sears can be antedated. View "NFC Techoloty, LLC v. Matal" on Justia Law