Tessera Receives Right to Appeal Notice in '419 Patent Re-exam

Tessera Technologies, Inc, a provider of transformational technologies that enable innovation in next-generation electronics, today announced the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) on Sept. 17, 2008, issued a Right of Appeal Notice in the ongoing inter partes reexamination of Tessera's U.S. Patent No. 6,433,419 (the '419 patent), withdrawing one of the prior rejections and maintaining other prior rejections of the claims under reexamination. The patent relates to semiconductor packaging technologies used in a variety of applications.
The reexamination proceedings now move on to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, after which they may go back to the examiners, or proceed to further appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Typically, these appellate procedures can take many years to be resolved. The claims of a patent undergoing reexamination remain valid until a reexamination certificate cancelling the claims is issued. A certificate can only be issued after all appeals have been exhausted.
"We look forward to addressing what we believe are significant procedural and substantive errors on which the examiners' decisions were based," stated Henry R. "Hank" Nothhaft, president and chief executive officer, Tessera. "These include grounding the entire proceedings on claim constructions that conflict fundamentally with those issued by the United States Federal Courts and the United States International Trade Commission in prior actions, and refusing to consider certain papers and evidence submitted by Tessera."
Tessera has asserted the '419 patent in prior legal actions and is asserting the patent in certain of its pending actions, and in none of them has any court or commission suggested application of the PTO's unique claim construction. Source