Yesterday (July 18), two decisions came out;
IPR Appeal filed by Samsung – Affirming PTABs final written decision.
IPR Appeal filed by Google – Affirming PTABs final written decision.

This means that the Federal Circuit supports the validity of Neonode’s 879 patent claims as non-obvious

This renders into two interesting observations;

1. The order of these opinions.
   IF the Markman decision would be affirmed (i.e not reopened), why would they present these two opinions first? Since then these IPR Appeals would not have any meaning.
   That could indicate a reverse of the Markman decision.
   However, I don’t know how/if the courts works like this? If there are any guidelines for such proceedings. i.e the order of release for related opinions.
   
   
2. The actual decisions.
   Since the Federal Circuit now shoots down the IPR appeals, meaning they consider the patent valid, and enforceable(?), will they also consider reversing the Markman? (i.e overturning Judge Albright’s decision about validity). This could also be an indication of that.

We all have to wait and see.

But still, 2 down, 1 to go for Neonode!

In the Google case, the court agreed with the Board that, based on the intrinsic evidence, “gliding . . . away” does not simply mean “moving.” Because we are satisfied that the intrinsic evidence is enough to support the Board’s implicit claim construction, we need not further address the extrinsic evidence.

In the Samsung case, the court agreed with the PTAB’s analysis that Hirayama did not teach the limitation specified in claim element 1d of the ‘879 patent. Furthermore, the court found no merit in Samsung’s “design choice” argument, which claimed that it would be obvious to implement the user interface without relocating or duplicating the icon during the gliding operation.