Staton Techiya Again Fails to Revive Patent at Appeals Court

An appeals court affirmed a US Patent and Trademark Office tribunal’s decision invalidating 15 claims from a Staton Techiya LLC unit’s noise-suppressing ear-bud patent asserted against Samsung Electronics Co.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit agreed with the Patent Trial and Appeal Board that claims from US Patent No. 8,315,400, which were challenged by Samsung, were either not novel or obvious in light of earlier inventions.

In an opinion issued Tuesday, the court rejected Techiya unit Cases2Tech LLC’s contention that the PTAB had given too broad a meaning to the term “background noise level” as used ...