Case: Patents/Obviousness (P.T.A.B.)

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board held that challenged claims of Varia Holdings LLC’s patent directed to mobile communication devices enabled to output radio frequency signal data emulating an active or passive RFID transponder are unpatentable as obvious over prior art, in an inter partes review by Apple Inc. According to the board, the challenged claims are obvious over various combinations of prior art, including prior art directed to identifying objects or persons using an RFID transponder, and to allowing a Bluetooth headset to establish an audio connection and communicate with a conventional wireless phone that does not have Bluetooth ...