Federal Circuit Reverses and Remands PTAB Decisions for L&P Client Polaris Innovations

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a final written decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in IPR2017-01500 (Federal Circuit Case No. 2019-1483).  This follows the Federal Circuit’s similar vacating and remanding the PTAB’s final written decision in IPR2017-00901 (Federal Circuit Case No. 2019-1484) about two weeks earlier.  These two appeal decisions are victories for L&P client Polaris Innovations, Ltd., the owner of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,532,505 and 7,405,993, which claim aspects of memory-controller technology.  The IPR petitions were two of eight filed by NVIDIA Corp. after Polaris had accused NVIDIA of infringing the ’505 and ’993 Patents and other patents relating to computer memory technology.  Polaris prevailed in whole or in part in the other six IPRs, but the PTAB ruled in favor of NVIDIA in these two IPRs, and Polaris appealed. The parties then reached a confidential settlement, and the Solicitor of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office intervened in the appeal to defend the PTAB’s decision.  The decisions were L&P’s second and third victories at the Federal Circuit so far this year.