Intel Corporation v. Koninklijke Philips N.v.

N OTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
INTEL CORPORATION,
Appellant
v.
KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS N.V.,
Appellee
______________________
2022-2034, 2022-2035
______________________
Appeals from the United States Patent and Trademark
Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in Nos. IPR2021-
00327, IPR2021-00370.
______________________
Decided: February 22, 2024
______________________
CHRISTINA J ORDAN M CCULLOUGH , Perkins Coie LLP,
Seattle, WA, argued for appellant. Also represented by
L ORI ANN G ORDON, N ATHAN K. K ELLEY , Washington, DC;
T ARA L AUREN K URTIS , Chicago, IL.
P ETER F. SNELL , Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky
and Popeo, PC, New York, NY, argued for appellee. Also
represented by WILLIAM MEUNIER, MICHAEL RENAUD, Bos-
ton, MA.
______________________
Case: 22-2034 Document: 41 Page: 1 Filed: 02/22/2024

-- 1 of 4 --

INTEL CORPORATION v. KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS N.V. 2
Before P ROST , T ARANTO, and CHEN, Circuit Judges.
CHEN, Circuit Judge.
Intel Corporation (Intel) filed two petitions for inter
partes review of several claims of U.S. Patent No. 9,436,809
(’809 patent). These petitions challenged the claims for be-
ing unpatentable as obvious over two distinct combinations
of references: (1) Menezes1 in view of Brands-Chaum,2 and
(2) OCPS3 in view of Brands-Chaum. The Board’s final
written decisions found that Intel had failed to show by a
preponderance of the evidence that the challenged claims
were unpatentable. Intel appeals these decisions, and we
have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A). We af-
firm.
First, we reject Intel’s argument that the Board failed
to address the unpatentability grounds as articulated in
the petitions. According to Intel, rather than considering
whether it would have been obvious to incorporate the
broad distance-measurement concept allegedly taught in
Brands-Chaum into Menezes’s or OCPS’s authentication
protocol, the Board’s final written decisions reversed the
references—evaluating whether it would have been
1 ALFRED J. MENEZES ET AL ., HANDBOOK OF APPLIED
CRYPTOGRAPHY (1997).
2 Stefan Brands & David Chaum, Distance-Bound-
ing Protocols, E UROCRYPT ’93, 344–59 (1994).
3 Open Copy Protection System, Philips Research
Proposal to Broadcast Protection Discussion Group, Ver-
sion 1.4 (May 7, 2002); OCPS Compliance and Robustness
Rules (May 7, 2002). In this opinion, “OCPS” refers to two
separate documents describing the Open Copy Protection
System protocol. The parties do not dispute that OCPS can
be treated as a single publication, i.e., as a single primary
reference.
Case: 22-2034 Document: 41 Page: 2 Filed: 02/22/2024

-- 2 of 4 --

INTEL CORPORATION v. KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS N.V. 3
obvious to modify Brands-Chaum’s specific example of a
distance-bounding protocol to use Menezes’s or OCPS’s
multi-bit message. We disagree. The Board expressly
acknowledged that Intel’s proposed combinations involved
timing Menezes’s and OCPS’s multi-bit challenge-response
exchanges to calculate a distance between devices or en-
force a distance limit. J.A. 17–18, 29; J.A. 47. The Board
then found that transmitting multiple bits, instead of a sin-
gle bit, would have resulted in an inaccurate distance
measurement and would have impaired security. J.A. 21,
31; J.A. 57. In other words, the Board correctly understood
the proposed combinations and identified deficiencies asso-
ciated with these combinations. The Board’s final written
decisions thus squarely addressed the obviousness theories
advanced in the petitions.
Second, substantial evidence supports the Board’s de-
termination that Brands-Chaum’s teachings are incompat-
ible with Menezes’s and OCPS’s multi-bit exchanges. The
Board emphasized that Intel did not reconcile the conflict
between Menezes’s and OCPS’s disclosures directed to
multi-bit exchanges and Brands-Chaum’s disclosure that
an “essential element” of its distance-bounding protocol
“consists of a single-bit challenge and rapid single-bit re-
sponse.” J.A. 3212 (emphases added); see J.A. 23, 31–32;
J.A. 59. The Board further found that timing a multi-bit
message would result in unwanted delays and that such
delays would impair security, crediting Intel’s expert testi-
mony explaining that (1) Brands-Chaum’s prover device
immediately responds to a challenge so that propagation
delay dominates the time being timed by a verifier device,
(2) propagation delay has an “iron-clad relationship be-
tween distance and time,” (3) sending a multi-bit message
takes longer than sending a single-bit message, and (4) an
unwanted delay of just nanoseconds could cause a message
to travel meters. J.A. 21–22, 31–32, 32 n.19; J.A. 57–59, 59
n.13. This amounts to substantial evidence for the Board’s
determination that transmitting a multi-bit message
Case: 22-2034 Document: 41 Page: 3 Filed: 02/22/2024

-- 3 of 4 --

INTEL CORPORATION v. KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS N.V. 4
would create unwanted delays, which in turn would render
the distance measurement inaccurate and impair security.
We see no reason on this record to disturb the Board’s find-
ings that Brands-Chaum’s teachings are incompatible with
Menezes’s and OCPS’s multi-bit authentication protocols.
We have considered Intel’s remaining arguments—in-
cluding Intel’s contention that the Board should have found
a motivation to combine notwithstanding the delay and se-
curity issues associated with timing a multi-bit message—
and find them unpersuasive. For the foregoing reasons, we
affirm.
AFFIRMED
Case: 22-2034 Document: 41 Page: 4 Filed: 02/22/2024

-- 4 of 4 --