In Alacritech, Inc., v. Intel, [2019-1467, 2019-1468] (July 31, 2020) the Federal Circuit vacated the Board’s obviousness determination as to claims 41–43 of U.S. Patent No. 8,131,880  because the Board did not adequately support its finding that the asserted prior art combination teaches or suggests a limitation recited in claims, and remanded for further proceedings regarding those claims.

The ’880 patent relates to computer networking, and is specifically directed to offloading certain network-related processing tasks from a host computer’s central processing unit (CPU) to an “intelligent network interface card” (INIC). According to the ’880 patent, one of the tasks that can be offloaded from the CPU to the INIC is the reassembly of data from packets received by the host computer from the network.

The Federal Circuit said that to support Federal Circuit review, the Board is obligated to provide an administrative record showing the evidence on which the findings are based, accompanied by the agency’s reasoning in reaching its conclusions. The Federal Circuit said that it does not require perfect explanations, and it will uphold a decision of less than ideal clarity if the agency’s path may reasonably be discerned.  However, the Federal Circuit found that the Board’s analysis of the disclosure of the reassembly limitations in claims 41–43 falls short of that which the APA and precedent require.

The Federal Circuit found that the Board’s analysis did not acknowledge the parties’ dispute over where the reassembly occurs, much less explain how the prior art teaches or suggests reassembly in the network interface. As such, the Federal Circuit said that it could not reasonably discern whether the Board followed a proper path in determining that the asserted prior art teaches or suggests the reassembly limitations, and by extension, that the subject matter of claims 41–43 would have been obvious.

The Federal Circuit further noted that because the Board’s reasoning appears to be untethered to either party’s position, it could not infer that the Board’s obviousness determinations flowed directly from its rejection of the patent owner’s arguments or adoption of the Petitioner’s arguments.

The Federal Circuit vacated the Board’s obviousness determination as to claims 41–43 and remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.