The Patent Trial and Appeal Board upheld Corephotonics’ U.S. Patent No. 9,568,712—on a miniature telephoto lens assembly for a smartphone camera—over Apple’s arguments prior inventions made it invalid.
The board’s finding that parts of the patent were nonobvious was based on a mathematical error that “appears to have tainted its analysis,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said in a nonprecedential opinion. It sent the case back for the ...