Polaris Innovations Limited v. Brent, 48 F.4th 1365

NVIDIA petitioned for IPRs challenging Polaris’s U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,532,505 (the ’505 patent) and 7,405,993 (the ’993 patent); the PTAB found all challenged claims unpatentable and Polaris appealed.
Appeals were remanded due to Arthrex Appointments Clause issues; during remand Polaris and NVIDIA (later settled) filed joint motions to terminate the IPRs.
The Supreme Court’s Arthrex decision (Arthrex II) vacated the court’s prior vacatur, which reinstated the Board’s original final written decisions; the Board denied termination as untimely because it had already decided the merits.
Claim-construction disputes: in the ’993 patent, whether “memory chips” requires unpackaged dies only; in the ’505 patent, whether a “resource tag buffer” must be a single physical buffer or may be a logically unified storage across locations.
The Federal Circuit affirmed: (1) the Board did not err in denying termination under 35 U.S.C. § 317 because the merits had been decided and the Board retains discretion to proceed; (2) “memory chip” encompasses packaged or unpackaged dies; (3) “resource tag buffer” may be a logically unified buffer and the cited prior art disclosed such a buffer.

Issue	Polaris’s Argument	PTO/NVIDIA’s Argument	Held
Whether the Board erred in denying the joint motions to terminate under 35 U.S.C. § 317	Motion to terminate was timely and should have been granted; the Board should have dismissed the IPRs after settlement	The final written decisions had already decided the merits before the motion; § 317 mandates termination only with respect to a petitioner and permits the Board to proceed if no petitioner remains	Denial affirmed: motions were untimely because the Board had decided merits; § 317 gives the Board discretion to continue
Construction of "memory chips" / "semiconductor memory component" (’993)	"Memory chip" should be limited to unpackaged IC dies (not packaged ICs) to avoid prior art	Claim language and specification do not limit packaging; ordinary meaning includes packaged or unpackaged chips	Affirmed Board: "memory chip" reasonably includes packaged and unpackaged dies; Polaris did not clearly disavow broader meaning
Meaning and application of "resource tag buffer" (’505)	The term requires a single physical buffer; multiple separate buffers cannot satisfy the claim	The specification describes the buffer functionally; Polaris’s expert defined a "single buffer" by logical unity (common type/purpose) which the prior art met	Affirmed: Board reasonably adopted the logical-unity definition and found substantial evidence that prior art disclosed a single (logical) resource tag buffer

Arthrex, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., 941 F.3d 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (Appointments Clause decision prompting remands for relief)
United States v. Arthrex, Inc., 141 S. Ct. 1970 (U.S. 2021) (Supreme Court-modified remedy for Appointments Clause violation)
Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (framework for claim construction)
VirnetX Inc. v. Apple Inc., 931 F.3d 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (standard of review for § 317 issues)
Thorner v. Sony Comput. Ent. Am. LLC, 669 F.3d 1362 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (patentee must clearly redefine terms to limit ordinary meaning)
Liebel-Flarsheim Co. v. Medrad, Inc., 358 F.3d 898 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (cannot import limitations from a preferred embodiment absent clear intent)
Aqua Prods., Inc. v. Matal, 872 F.3d 1290 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (Board may proceed to final decision under § 317)
Realtime Data, LLC v. Iancu, 912 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (claim construction must consider entire patent context)
In re Translogic Tech., Inc., 504 F.3d 1249 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (applying Phillips best practices in IPRs)
In re Sullivan, 362 F.3d 1324 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (set-aside standard for agency action)
Amazon.com, Inc. v. Barnesandnoble.com, Inc., 239 F.3d 1343 (Fed. Cir. 2001) (what a reference teaches is a question of fact)
Fleming v. Cirrus Design Corp., 28 F.4th 1214 (Fed. Cir. 2022) (review of PTAB factual findings for substantial evidence)