Commission Grants Review of Initial Determination
The Commission has granted review in part of the final initial determination in Inv. No. 337-TA-619, In the Matter of Certain Flash Memory Controllers, Drivers, Memory Cards and Media Players and Products Containing Same. On April 10, 2009 the ALJ issed a final initial determination finding no violation of section 337 by respondents. The ALJ also found that claim 8 of U.S. Pat. No. 7,137,011 was rendered obvious by prior art. The Commission, after reviewing the ALJ’s final initial determination, has decided to review the claim construction, infringement, and validity (including the ALJ’s decision not to consider a PCT publication as prior art) of U.S. Pat. No. 6,763,424.
The Commission instructed the parties to address five questions in their briefing: (1) whether the accused products would infringe claim 17 of the ’424 patent if “updating pages of original data within any of the metablock component blocks less than all the pages within the block” was construed to cover single-page updates; (2) whether “reading and assembling data from the first and second plurality of pages” should be construed to cover the so-called “table method” and if infringement would result if the term was so construed; (3) why the Sinclair PCT was not listed on any notice of prior art as required by Ground Rule 5; (4) under what circumstances the Commission should consider a reference not submitted in accordance with an ALJ’s ground rule; and (5) the similarities and differences between U.S. Pat. No. 6,725,321 and the Sinclair PCT. Written submissions are required by September 3, 2009 and reply submissions are required by September 12, 2009. (PDF)
