19
Apr
By Eric Schweibenz
On March 14, 2012, Chief ALJ Charles E. Bullock issued the public version of Order No. 32 (dated March 1, 2012) in Certain Digital Televisions and Components Thereof (Inv. No. 337-TA-789).  In the Order, ALJ Bullock construed various claim terms in connection with the asserted U.S. Patent Nos. 5,511,096 (the ‘096 patent), 5,621,761 (the ‘761 patent), 5,703,887 (the ‘887 patent), 5,745,522 (the ‘522 patent), and 5,511,082 (the ‘082 patent).

By way of background, the Complainant in this investigation is Vizio Inc. (“Vizio”) and the Respondents are Coby Electronics Corp., Curtis International Ltd., ON Corp US, Inc., Renesas Electronics Corp., Renesas Electronics America, Inc., Seceptre, Inc., and Westinghouse Digital, LLC (collectively, the “Respondents”).  See our July 15, 2011 post for more details about this investigation.

The ‘887 Patent

The parties disputed the following terms/phrases of the ‘887 patent: “a(x),” “b(x),” and “finite impulse response filter having an input for receiving a serial bit stream of codeword data,… said filter having an output for providing a serial bit stream of syndromes.”  ALJ Bullock construed “a(x)” and “b(x),” both, in accordance with the definition proposed by Respondents and the Commission Investigative Staff (OUII), as “a polynomial having a value other than 1 and representing a function for a filter that provides a finite impulse response.”  As for “finite impulse response filter having an input for receiving a serial bit stream of codeword data,… said filter having an output for providing a serial bit stream of syndromes,” the ALJ again agreed with Respondents and the OUII, constring this phrase to mean “a one bit in, one bit out, finite impulse response (FIR) filter which receives as its input a serial bit stream of codeword data, and which outputs a serial bit stream of syndromes.”  The ALJ also adopted the parties agreed upon construction for the claim terms “serial bit stream” and “dual of a shortened cyclic code.”

The ‘522 Patent

The parties disputed the following terms of the ‘522 patent: “data randomizer” and “scrambling.”  ALJ Bullock construed “data randomizer,” in accordance with the OUII’s alternative definition of “a structure for scrambling or unscrambling data.”  As for “scrambling,” the ALJ agreed with the definition proposed by both Respondents and the OUII in-the-alternative, construing the term as “performing a logical operation on data bits to be transmitted in order to flip the bits in a random or pseudorandom manner.”

The ALJ additionally adopted the parties agreed upon construction for the phrase “means for multiplying an N-bit pseudorandom output from said LFSR by an N-bit value fk that is an element of said finite field.”

The ‘096 Patent

The parties disputed the following terms/phrases of the ‘096 patent: “inner decoder,” “coded symbols,” “means for deinterleaving the recovered blocks,” and “recovered blocks.”  ALJ Bullock construed “inner decoder” as proposed by Vizio and the OUII, “a decoder performing a decoding function prior to another decoder.”  Regarding “coded symbols,” the ALJ again agreed with Vizio and the OUII, construing the term as “symbols produced by an encoder.  As for “means for deinterleaving the recovered blocks,” the ALJ construed this means plus function term in accordance with the structure and function proposed by Respondents and the OUII.  The ALJ determined the function to be “deinterleaving the recovered blocks” and specified the structure as deinterleaver/stripper 34.  Finally, as to “recovered blocks,” ALJ Bullock construed this term as it was defined by Respondents, “blocks comprising coded symbols as recovered by the inner decoder.”

The ALJ also adopted the parties agreed upon construction for the claim terms and phrases “means for receiving and demodulating convolutionally encoded output symbols from a communication path,” “interleaved blocks,” “symbol,” “outer symbol error decoder,” “Reed Soloman decoder,” and “Viterbi decoder.”

The ‘082 Patent

The parties disputed the following terms/phrases of the ‘082 patent: “state,” “sixteen state convolutional code,” “octal generators,” and “puncture map of…” 

ALJ Bullock construed the term “state” in accordance with the definition proposed by Vizio, “a condition among a set of possible conditions.” Regarding “sixteen state convolutional code,” the ALJ agreed with the OUII, construing the phrase to mean “convolutional code having exactly sixteen possible states.” ALJ Bullock construed the term “octal generators” as it was defined by Respondents and the OUII, “base-8 numbers indicating which input bits and shift register stages of the convolutional encoder are selected for producing output bits.”  As to “puncture map of…,” the ALJ construed this term to according to the definition proposed by Respondents and the OUII.  The ALJ additionally adopted the parties agreed upon construction for the claim term “puncturing.”

The ‘761 Patent

The parties disputed the following terms/phrases of the ‘761 patent: “exclusive OR gate” and “AND gate.”  ALJ Bullock construed both terms in accordance with their plain and ordinary meaning, as proposed by the OUII and by Respondents in the alternative.

The ALJ also adopted the parties agreed upon construction for the claim terms “postcoder,” “sequence estimation algorithm,” “wj′ = xj′ (+) yj-1′ (+) (xj′ + yj′) (•) (xj-1′ + yj-1′),” and “postcoder producing said output data stream wj′ and zj′ from said data streams yj′ and xj′ in accordance with the relationships  wj′ = xj′ (+) yj-1′ (+) (xj′ + yj′) (•) (xj-1′ + yj-1′) and zj′ = yj′ (+) xj′ (+) yj-1′ (+) xj-1′.