Fed. Cir. Invalidates Remote Control Patents in Newman decision

The Federal Circuit affirmed an administrative tribunal’s decision nixing a pair of Universal Electronics Inc. universal remote patents.

A patent infringement lawsuit UEI filed in 2018 against Roku could now proceed, as the decision capped four years of review of UEI’s patents by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. One UEI patent survived that process while key parts of five patents were invalidated.

Those include US Patent Nos. 7,821,504 and 7,821,505, which Judge Pauline Newman concluded “are unpatentable for obviousness” in a nonprecedential opinion issued Monday.

In reaching her opinion, ...