Federal Circuit Reminds PTAB That Short Cuts Are Not Allowed

Last month, in a precedential decision, the Federal Circuit vacated-in-part and remanded the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's ("Board") obviousness determination regarding Alacritech's computer networking patent because the Board failed to adequately explain its findings for three of the challenged claims.

Alacritech, Inc. v. Intel Corp., et al. (Appeal Nos. 2019-1467 and 2019-1468) involved the appeal of inter partes review ("IPR") proceedings initiated by Intel Corporation, Cavium, LLC and Dell Inc. (collectively, "Intel") against certain claims of Alacritech U.S. Patent No. 8,131,880 (the "'880 Patent"). The '880 Patent concerns offloading certain network-related processing tasks from a host computer's central processing unit ("CPU") to an intelligent network interface card ("INIC"). Relevant here, the Board issued a Final Written Decision determining that claims 41-43 of the '880 Patent, all of which require offloading the task of reassembling data received by