The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential decision on 5 November in Google LLC v DDC Technology, LLC (Nos. 2025-1315, -1316 and -1330), affirming three final written decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB): Google failed to prove the remaining challenged claims of three DDC virtual reality (VR) viewer patents unpatentable as obvious.
The patents, US 9,420,075, 10,528,199 and 11,093,001, share one specification and cover a VR viewer that holds an ordinary smartphone: the user works an input mechanism from outside the housing, and the mechanism touches the screen so the phone registers a touch.
In IPR2023-00707, -00709 and -00711 Google relied on Japanese publication JP 3176588 combined with US publication 2013/0082963. The PTAB held some claims unpatentable; those were not part of this appeal.
Copying and praise
For claim 1 of the '075 and '199 patents, the PTAB found that the two references taught every limitation and that there was a motivation to combine, but DDC's objective evidence weighed more. Google's GCV2 VR viewer copied DDC's DODOcase VR 1.2 viewer and the inventor's prototype, which the PTAB weighed heavily, and three Google engineers praised the prototype's button in emails, which it gave moderate weight.
The court said copying requires replicating a specific product, and the comparison is between the patentee's product and the alleged copy, not the claims. The PTAB had compared the products in detail and found two minor, non-material differences, a finding supported by substantial evidence. The engineers' emails responded to a third party's prototype, unlike self-praise.
Google argued that its strong prima facie case should outweigh DDC's marginal objective evidence. The court said objective indicia must always be considered; the PTAB never found Google's case strong or DDC's evidence marginal, and Google did not challenge the weight the PTAB assigned. It also stressed that inter partes review has no burden-shifting framework of the kind used in examination.
The other claims
Claims 18 and 20 of the '075 patent and claims 27 and 28 of the '001 patent survived on other grounds: the court upheld the PTAB's readings of "disposed on" and "lever", found Google had not proved that a linkage element was made from a flexible material, and held its argument on "coupled to" forfeited because it was not raised before the PTAB.
J&C notes that in a US inter partes review, a patent owner who can show that the challenger copied its specific product, and who has contemporaneous praise, may still save its claims even where the prior art combination and motivation to combine are established. The evidence here was a product-to-product comparison and emails from the other side's engineers.
Source: www.cafc.uscourts.gov
