The patent litigation case that I decided to analyze was the Carnegie Mellon University vs Marvell Tech Group case. This case has been going for about 7 years, and resulted in Marvell paying Carnegie Mellon University a settlement of $750 million. This money will eventually go to the the inventors who developed the patents at CMU. This case is centered around 2 patents:
1. 6,201,839 - "Method and Apparatus for Correlation-Sensitive Adaptive Sequence Detection"
2. 6,438,180 - "Soft and Hard Sequence Detection in ISI Memory Channels"
In this post, I will be analyzing Claim 4 of the first patent -- "Method and Apparatus for Correlation-Sensitive Adaptive Sequence Detection" (6,201,839). The claim is as follows:
4. A method of determining branch metric values for branches of a trellis for a Viterbi-like detector, comprising:
selecting a branch metric function for each of the branches at a certain time index from a set of signal-dependent branch metric functions; and
applying each of said selected functions to a plurality of signal samples to determine the metric value corresponding to the branch for which the applied branch metric function was selected, wherein each sample corresponds to a different sampling time instant.
5. The method of claim 4 further comprising the step of receiving said signal samples, said signal samples having signal-dependent noise, correlated noise, or both signal-dependent and correlated noise associated therewith.
After reading this claim, it looks like it is focusing on the specific way in branch values are calculated. However, it does specify that this only applies for a Viterbi-like detector. The specific way in which they are calculated are broken down into parts. The first is that there is a specific time in which the branch metric functions are applied. The second is that each function applied for determining the branch metric values must be applied to a plurality of signal samples.
I'm no electrical engineer, but I liked how this claim was somewhat easy for an undergraduate student like myself to understand. I also took away from this that no matter how complicated or dense the subject matter is, it is always a good idea to write it in simple English, such that people can deduce the meaning of the claims from the given material.
Great post!
ReplyDeleteI appreciate how you not only listed the patent you analyzed but also the other patent in question in this particular trial. In addition, it's interesting that you chose the fourth claim. I also agree with you that the claim was easy to understand even for me.