IP Law Daily, PATENT—Fed. Cir.: CPC Patent Technologies’ biometric verification patent revived on appeal, (Nov 10, 2025)

By Saurabh Kashyap, B.A., M.A., LL.B., LL.M.

PTAB’s finding of obviousness lacked substantial evidentiary support where the Board equated an “association” of data in prior art with a claimed “defining” of a memory location.

In a non-precedential disposition, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dismissed-in-part, reversed-in-part, and remanded two final written decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that had invalidated almost all claims of a biometric verification patent owned by CPC Patent Technologies Pty Ltd. The appellate court found that the PTAB erred in holding the patent claims obvious under 35 U.S.C. §103 because the cited prior art reference disclosed only an “association” between biometric and card data, not a definitional relationship as required by the claims. The Federal Circuit dismissed the appeal as to certain claims already found unpatentable in a related proceeding and reversed and remanded as to the remaining claims (CPC Patent Technologies Pty Ltd. v. ASSA Abloy AB, No. 24-1492 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 10, 2025)).

Background. The appellant, CPC Patent Technologies Pty Ltd., is an Australian technology company that develops and licenses biometric authentication and payment verification technologies. The appellees are part of the ASSA ABLOY Group, a global leader in security, access control, and identity management systems. Both companies operate in overlapping markets involving digital access, secure identification, and biometric data management.

The dispute involved CPC's U.S. Patent No. 8,620,039 (the '039 patent), titled "Biometric Verification Method and System." The patent describes a system for credit card security that verifies the identity of the card user through biometric verification. It stores the user's biometric signature, such as a fingerprint, at a memory location determined by the card's unique information, ensuring that only authorized users can initiate transactions. The patent distinguishes itself from prior art by requiring that card information define or establish the storage location of the biometric data, rather than merely associate it with a user identifier.

ASSA ABLOY filed two inter partes review (IPR) petitions challenging all twenty claims of the '039 patent as obvious over prior art, principally European Patent Publication No. EP 0924655 ("Hsu"). Hsu described a biometric verification mechanism in which each user was enrolled by providing fingerprint data and an identification number, with the system storing the fingerprint "in association with" the user's number.

The PTAB instituted review, construing the term "defining" to mean "setting or establishing." Applying that construction, the Board held that Hsu's "association" of fingerprint data with a user number disclosed the claimed limitation. Therefore, it determined that all claims were unpatentable under §103 as obvious over Hsu in combination with other prior art references.

CPC appealed, arguing that the PTAB’s interpretation conflated the mere “association” of data with the act of “defining” a memory location, and that the prior art did not teach or suggest the required definitional relationship between card information and biometric data storage.

Federal Circuit’s analysis. The appellate court agreed with the PTAB’s definition of “defining” but found that the Board misapplied that construction. The Federal Circuit emphasized that Hsu’s disclosure of associating biometric data with user identifiers does not demonstrate that the card information determines or establishes where the biometric data is stored. “To associate two pieces of data with one another,” the court explained, “does not necessarily mean that one piece of data sets or otherwise establishes the location of the other.”

The Federal Circuit concluded that the PTAB’s finding lacked substantial evidentiary support, referencing Regents of the Univ. of Minnesota v. Gilead Sciences, Inc., 61 F.4th 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2023), and In re Baxter Int’l, Inc., 678 F.3d 1357 (Fed. Cir. 2012), which require that factual findings be supported by “such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept.” The court held that the PTAB’s inference that an “association” between two data elements satisfied the “defining” limitation had no evidentiary foundation.

The court also found the testimony of ASSA’s expert, Stuart Lipoff, to be conclusory and therefore insufficient under TQ Delta, LLC v. Cisco Sys., Inc., 942 F.3d 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2019). Lipoff had opined that Hsu’s system stored fingerprint images “at a memory location associated with the specific user/employee number received from a card,” but, as the court noted, this opinion merely restated the claim language without explaining the underlying mechanism or providing corroborating evidence.

The Federal Circuit further rejected the PTAB’s argument that Hsu’s process sequence—receiving card information before storing biometric data—implied that the card information determined storage location. The court found this reasoning speculative, holding that “the fact that one event precedes another does not establish that it determines it.”

Finding that the PTAB’s conclusion was unsupported by substantial evidence, the Federal Circuit reversed the finding of unpatentability as to claims 3–18 and remanded the case for further consideration of other unaddressed grounds. Claims 1–2 and 19–20, previously invalidated in the Apple decision, were dismissed as moot.

Dissenting opinion. Circuit Judge Evan J. Wallach dissented, arguing that the majority substituted its judgment for that of the PTAB and failed to apply the deferential substantial evidence standard required under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. §706. Citing In re Gartside, 203 F.3d 1305 (Fed. Cir. 2000); In re NuVasive, Inc., 842 F.3d 1376 (Fed. Cir. 2016), he emphasized that substantial evidence must be assessed "on the record as a whole" and may exist even when two reasonable but inconsistent conclusions could be drawn. In his view, Hsu's Figure 4 and paragraph 26—showing fingerprint data stored alongside user identifiers—supported the PTAB's finding that the "defining" limitation was met. He added that Merriam-Webster's definition of "associate" ("related, connected, or combined together") reinforced the Board's interpretation that the user number "sets" the position of the fingerprint's storage.

The Case is No. 24-1492.

Judge: Chen, R.

Attorneys: Steven M. Coyle (Cantor Colburn LLP) for CPC Patent Technologies Pty Ltd. Lionel M. Lavenue (Garrett & Dunner, LLP) for Assa Abloy AB.

Companies: CPC Patent Technologies Pty Ltd.; Assa Abloy AB

Cases: Patent FedCirNews USPTO