Apple Inc. v. Smart Mobile Technologies LLC

Case: 25-1090 Document: 44 Page: 1 Filed: 08/27/2026

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential. United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit

______________________ APPLE INC., Appellant v.

SMART MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES LLC,

Appellee ______________________

2025-1090 ______________________

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. IPR2022- 01223.

______________________ Decided: August 27, 2026 ______________________

ANGELA M. OLIVER, Haynes and Boone, LLP, Washing- ton, DC argued for appellant. Also represented by ANDREW S. EHMKE, DEBRA JANECE MCCOMAS, Dallas, TX; ADAM CARL FOWLES, Plano, TX; LAURA VU, San Francisco, CA.

PHILIP GRAVES, Graves & Shaw LLP, Los Angeles, CA, for appellee. Also represented by GREER N. SHAW.

______________________

Before REYNA, HUGHES, and STARK, Circuit Judges. 2 APPLE INC. v. SMART MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES LLC STARK, Circuit Judge.

Apple, Inc. (“Apple”) appeals from a final written deci- sion of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”), reject- ing Apple’s arguments that claims 1-3 and 5 of Smart Mobile Technology LLC’s (“Smart Mobile’s”) U.S. Patent No. 9,319,075 (the“’075 patent”) are unpatentable as obvi- ous. We affirm.

I

Smart Mobile owns the ’075 patent, entitled “Wireless Devices with Transmission Control and Multiple Internet Protocol (IP) Based Paths of Communication.” J.A. 48. The ’075 patent is part of a family of patents whose mem- bers claim priority to a 1999 application1 and share a com- mon specification. Two of the members of the family are U.S. Patent Nos. 8.842,653 (the “’653 patent”) and 9,019,946 (the “’946 patent”), which are the subject of a related appeal. See Apple Inc. v. Smart Mobile Techs. LLC, No. 24-1607 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 27, 2026). We have today issued an opinion in the related appeal involving the ’653 and ’946 patents. We incorporate by reference the discus- sion of the pertinent technology from that opinion. See id. slip op. at 1-5.

Claim 1 of the ’075 patent is the only independent claim at issue here. It recites:

[1.pre] An IP-enabled communication device for multiplexing signals comprising:

[1a] a plurality of wireless communication units, wherein the device supports a plural- ity of transmit and receive frequencies and a plurality of wireless protocols;

[1b] wherein a first wireless communica- tion unit is coupled to a first set of antennas configured to transmit and receive on a first network and wherein a second wire- less communication unit is coupled to a sec- ond set of antennas and configured to transmit and receive on a second network; [1c] wherein the at least one wireless com- munication unit is configured for radio fre- quency communication; [1d] wherein the first wireless communica- tion unit is configured to operate at a lower frequency than the second wireless commu- nication unit such that the first and second wireless communication units operate as complementary systems and reduce inter- ference with each other; and [1e] wherein the first wireless transmit and receive unit operates on the first network path to a remote server and the second wireless transmit and receive unit com- municates to the remote server on the sec- ond network path in response to a change in the signal strength and/or connectivity of the first wireless communication unit or second wireless communication unit; and [1f] wherein video or audio can be accessed simultaneously with performance opti- mized for each through dedicated or multi- plexed paths; and [1g] further in communication with the re- mote server, wherein the mobile device is configured to receive multiple IP data packets on a plurality of ports at substan- tially the same time and send multiple data

J.A. 60 (’075 pat. at 12:2-38 (emphasis and bracketed nu- merals added)).

In 2021, Smart Mobile sued Apple in the Western Dis- trict of Texas, alleging infringement of 13 patents, includ- ing the ’075 patent. In August 2023, prior to claim construction, the district court transferred the case against Apple to the Central District of California. 2 Apple then pe- titioned for IPR of claims 1-3 and 5 of the ’075 patent. The Board initially denied institution but subsequently granted Apple’s motion for a rehearing, following which it insti- tuted and directed the parties to include in their briefing a construction for the multiplexing term appearing in the preamble of claim 1.

After full briefing and an oral hearing, the Board is- sued its final written decision. It construed the one dis- puted claim term, “multiplexing signals,” to mean “combining multiple signal streams into one,” which was

Smart Mobile’s proposed construction. J.A. 16. The Board rejected Apple’s broader construction, which would have encompassed “switching,” whereby multiple signals travel sequentially on the same path but are not necessarily com- bined prior to being simultaneously transmitted on the same path. The Board then applied its construction to Ap- ple’s proposed combination of prior art references – Yegoshin 3 and Bernard 4 – and found Apple had not proven that either of them, alone or in combination, disclosed the “multiplexing signals” limitation of the challenged claims of the ’075 patent. The Board entered judgment for Smart Mobile.

Apple timely appealed. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A).

II

We review the Board’s ultimate claim construction de novo and its subsidiary factual findings regarding extrinsic evidence for substantial evidence. See Personalized Media

4 U.S. Patent No. 5,497,339, Bernard, describes a cradle (i.e., an external workstation) for a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). The cradle allows the PDA to communi- cate on multiple different networks. See J.A. 899 (Bernard at 1:54-57). Figure 10 of Bernard – which shows the so- called second embodiment relevant to this appeal – shows the PDA and cradle being connected by a single interface, serial interface 701, which allows the PDA to communicate with several networks.

III

Today’s opinion in related Appeal No. 24-1607 affirms the Board’s construction of “multiplexing signals,” which is the same construction the Board adopted in the ’075 IPR that is the subject of this appeal. The parties’ arguments, the intrinsic and extrinsic evidence, and the Board’s anal- ysis do not materially differ between the two IPRs. 5 Thus, we incorporate here our analysis from today’s opinion in Appeal No. 24-1607. For the same reasons given there, we construe “multiplexing signals” in the ’075 patent to mean “combining multiple signal streams into one.”

Our opinion in Appeal No. 24-1607 also affirmed the Board’s finding that neither Yegoshin nor Bernard dis- closes “multiplexing signals” under the Board’s construc- tion of that term. See Apple Inc. v. Smart Mobile Techs. LLC, No. 24-1607 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 27, 2026) slip op. at 16.

We incorporate this analysis as well and find substantial evidence supports the Board’s consistent finding here.

We recognize that Apple made additional arguments in the ’075 IPR that it did not make in the IPRs involving the ’653 and ’946 patents. We also acknowledge that the Board’s construction of “multiplexing signals” in the ’653 and ’946 IPRs was implicit, whereas here the Board ex- pressly adopted a construction. These differences do not impact our analysis in Appeal No. 24-1607, nor is its out- come based, in any way, on these differences. We have con- sidered Apple’s additional arguments and they do not alter our conclusions that the Board’s construction is correct and substantial evidence supports the Board’s application of that construction to the prior art.

IV

We have considered Apple’s remaining arguments and find them unpersuasive. Accordingly, for the reasons given above (and those in Appeal No. 24-1607), we affirm the Board’s judgement that Apple failed to prove claims 1-3 and 5 of the ’075 patent are unpatentable.

AFFIRMED