Nielsen Company (US), LLC v. TVision Insights, Inc.

Nielsen Company (US), LLC v. TVision Insights, Inc. The Federal Circuit affirmed the Board's obviousness determination. Substantial evidence supported the Board's finding that Tian was reasonably pertinent analogous art and that the asserted combinations taught the challenged limitations with a motivation to combine. The decision reinforces that analogous-art theories may be implicit in an IPR petition when the petition’s claim and motivation analysis gives fair notice, and that the relevant problem for reasonable pertinence is not limited to problems expressly identified in the patent specification. Affirmed. The court rejected Nielsen’s APA notice challenge because the petition and expert evidence put the reasonable-pertinence issue in play, Nielsen actually addressed that prong before the Board, and Nielsen showed no prejudice. On analogous art, the court held that the Board had substantial evidence to define the relevant problem broadly as image processing and facial detection/analysis, rather than limiting it to reducing use of illumination sources discussed in the specification. Tian’s disclosure of down-sampling lower-resolution facial images and analyzing face/head location supported the Board’s finding that it taught the claimed resolution-reduction and head-orientation limitations. The court rejected Nielsen’s attempts to read claim 4 as requiring pixel binning or reducing only a first image, and rejected the argument that claims 5 and 6 required facial recognition on a full-resolution second image. Expert testimony that reduced-resolution face detection saved processing resources and time supplied substantial evidence of motivation to combine for both asserted obviousness grounds. § 103 claim construction precedential § 103 claim construction precedential § 103 claim construction precedential