By: Mel R. Quintos

In the case of In re Schweickert (decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on January 26, 2017), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) instituted an Ex parte reexamination of U.S. Patent No. 7,574,272 (hereinafter, “the ‘272 patent”). The PTO rendered the claims of the ‘272 patent obvious based on a tworeference combination (namely, U.S. Patent No. 6,332,175 to Birrell and U.S. Patent No. 5,842,015 to Cunniff).

The ‘272 patent is directed to a portable media player, which as shown in the figure below, includes a CPU 102 that executes the transfer of compressed digital data from a storage device 126 to a buffer 124 then transfers the data through a high speed serial bus to a CODEC 114, where the data is converted to a decompressed analog data and ultimately sent to an audio output device 118 (e.g., a pair of headphones). —click here to read more—