IP Law Daily, PATENT—Fed. Cir.: Invalidation of Gesture Technology’s gesture-recognition patent claims affirmed on appeal, (Dec 2, 2025)

By Ravindra Kumar Singh, B.L.

PTAB correctly found anticipation by prior art and estoppel inapplicable to ex parte reexamination proceedings.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decision holding claims 11 and 13 of U.S. Patent No. 7,933,431 (the ’431 patent) invalid as anticipated by prior art, while dismissing the appeal as to all other claims previously held unpatentable. The court rejected arguments advanced by the patent owner, Gesture Technology Partners, LLC, under both the estoppel provisions of 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(1) and the jurisdictional limits on post-expiration patent proceedings, concluding that the USPTO acted within its authority and that substantial evidence supported its anticipation finding (In re Gesture Technology Partners, LLC, No. 2025-1075 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 1, 2025)).

Background. Gesture Technology Partners, LLC is a patent licensing entity. Samsung Electronics Co., a global electronics and smartphone manufacturer and a member of Unified Patents LLC, had initiated the reexamination request that triggered the proceedings at issue.

The ’431 patent is titled “Handheld Computer Apparatus With Gesture Recognition” and covers methods and devices enabling gesture-based input detection using video imaging and computer analysis. The claims at issue, 11 and 13, concern a gesture-recognizing handheld computer device, with claim 11 including a means for transmitting information, and claim 13 specifying that the device is a cellular phone.

In November 2021, Samsung filed a request for ex parte reexamination of the ’431 patent. Around the same time, Unified Patents LLC and Apple Inc. filed two inter partes review (IPR) petitions covering overlapping claims. The PTAB issued final written decisions in November 2022 in both IPRs, invalidating all claims except 11 and 13. Gesture attempted to terminate the reexamination, arguing that estoppel under § 315(e)(1) barred Samsung from maintaining the proceeding. The PTAB denied the request, continued the reexamination, and ultimately found claims 11 and 13 unpatentable as anticipated by U.S. Patent No. 5,982,853 (Liebermann). Gesture appealed.

The Federal Circuit had previously affirmed the PTAB’s decisions in both IPRs, rendering claims 1–10, 12, and 14–30 invalid. Accordingly, the court dismissed Gesture’s appeal as to those claims. The appeal as to claims 11 and 13 proceeded.

Estoppel. Gesture’s central argument was that the ex parte reexamination violated the statutory estoppel provision of § 315(e)(1), which bars an IPR petitioner or its privy from “maintain[ing] a proceeding before the Office” on any ground that was or reasonably could have been raised in an IPR.

The Federal Circuit disagreed. The court held that while § 315(e)(1) bars a petitioner from initiating or maintaining further proceedings such as IPRs or post-grant reviews, ex parte reexaminations are fundamentally different. Once initiated, the proceeding is entirely controlled by the USPTO. The third-party requester—here, Samsung—has no role in “maintaining” the proceeding after initiation. Relying on Alarm.com Inc. v. Hirshfeld, 26 F.4th 1348, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2022), the court explained that the statute and implementing regulations make clear that a requester’s involvement in an ex parte reexamination is limited to the initial request and, if applicable, a reply to a patent owner’s statement. As such, estoppel under § 315(e)(1) does not apply to these proceedings.

Anticipation. The court next considered whether the PTAB erred in finding that the Liebermann patent anticipated claims 11 and 13. Gesture challenged the Board’s finding that Liebermann disclosed the limitation in claim 7 (from which both 11 and 13 depend) requiring a “means for controlling a function of said apparatus using [gesture-derived] information.”

The Board had construed the means-plus-function limitation to require (1) receipt of position or movement data, (2) correlation of the data with a function, and (3) performance of that function. It concluded that Liebermann's video-based communication system for deaf people, which processes gesture input into unique identifiers and transmits them, satisfied this functional structure.

Gesture argued that Liebermann failed to disclose any correlation between the gesture data and a variable function of the apparatus, claiming that the sending function in Liebermann remained constant regardless of the input. The Federal Circuit disagreed. It held that Liebermann's method of digitizing image data, determining gesture start and end points, and translating that into variable data packets for transmission constituted correlation between gesture input and system function. Citing its own prior decisions on substantial evidence review of anticipation (In re Chudik, 851 F.3d 1365, 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2017); Teva Pharms. USA, Inc. v. Corcept Therapeutics, Inc., 18 F.4th 1377 (Fed. Cir. 2021)), the court found sufficient support for the Board’s finding.

Jurisdiction over expired patents. Gesture further argued that the USPTO lacked jurisdiction to conduct a reexamination on an expired patent. The Federal Circuit rejected this argument as well, reaffirming its ruling in Apple Inc. v. Gesture Tech. Partners, LLC, 127 F.4th 364, 368–69 (Fed. Cir. 2025), where it had confirmed that IPRs could proceed on expired patents because patentees retained enforceable rights to past damages. The court held that the same rationale applied equally to ex parte reexaminations. A “live case or controversy” persists as long as those rights are available, supporting the agency’s continued jurisdiction.

The Case is No. 25-1075.

Judge: Lourie, A.

Attorneys: John Wittenzellner (Williams Simons & Landis PLLC) for Gesture Technology Partners, LLC. Mary L. Kelly, Office of the Solicitor, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, for John A. Squires.

Companies: Gesture Technology Partners, LLC

Cases: Patent FedCirNews USPTO