On November 5, 2026, the Federal Circuit decided Google LLC v. DDC Technology, LLC, Nos. 2025-1315, 2025-1316, and 2025-1330, an appeal from three final written decisions of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. Google petitioned for inter partes review of U.S. Patent Nos. 9,420,075, 10,528,199, and 11,093,001, which the opinion says are assigned to DDC Technology, LLC and share a specification describing a virtual reality viewer for use with a smartphone (Op. 2-4). Each patent is titled "Virtual Reality Viewer and Input Mechanism"; they issued on August 16, 2016, January 7, 2020, and August 17, 2021. The Board determined that Google proved some challenged claims unpatentable but not claims 1-12, 14, and 18-20 of the '075 patent, claims 1, 2, 4-6, and 17-26 of the '199 patent, and claims 27 and 28 of the '001 patent. Google appealed the Board's judgment as to these surviving claims, and the court affirmed (Op. 9, 28).
In a final written decision dated October 24, 2024 in IPR2023-00707, the Board determined that Google had not shown any of claims 1-12, 14, and 18-20 of the '075 patent unpatentable (Paper 78, at 79-80). In final written decisions dated November 4, 2024, it determined in IPR2023-00709 that Google had shown claims 30, 34, 35, and 37-39 of the '199 patent unpatentable but not claims 1, 2, 4-6, and 17-26 (Paper 76, at 66-67), and in IPR2023-00711 that Google had shown claims 1-26, 29, and 30 of the '001 patent unpatentable but not claims 27 and 28 (Paper 76, at 74-75).
The claims
Claim 1 of the '075 patent, which the opinion quotes as an example, recites a virtual reality viewer for use with a mobile electronic device having a touch-screen. The viewer has a housing that holds the device and an input mechanism that is accessible from outside the housing and moveable inside it between a first position and an extended position. The input mechanism includes an electrical shield with a surface, only a portion of which is configured to contact a central region of the touch-screen when the mechanism is in the extended position (Op. 4). Google relied on the same combination of two prior art references in all three proceedings, Japanese Patent Publication JP 3176588 and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2013/0082963, and asserted obviousness theories that entail replacing the Japanese reference's remote touch circuit with an embodiment of the U.S. publication's actuator mechanism (Op. 5).
Claim 1: copying, praise, and the weighing
The Board found that the combination taught every limitation of claim 1 of the '075 and '199 patents and that a skilled artisan would have been motivated to combine the references. It also found that DDC established copying by Google, which it called strong evidence of nonobviousness, and industry praise, which it gave moderate weight, and concluded that on balance DDC's evidence of nonobviousness outweighed Google's evidence of obviousness (Op. 6).
Judge Reyna wrote for a panel that also included Circuit Judges Hughes and Stark. The court found no legal error in the Board's copying analysis, because it compared Google's viewer with DDC's allegedly copied products rather than with the claims, and it affirmed the copying finding despite two differences in the input mechanisms that the Board called "minor, non-material modifications." It also concluded that substantial evidence supported the praise finding, which rested on emails from Google engineers calling a prototype's button "genius" and "ingenious." The engineers were responding to a third party about a prototype that was not Google's, and the Board had accounted for the business relationship in which the emails were sent (Op. 11-14).
On the ultimate question, the court quoted its precedent that "objective considerations of non-obviousness must be considered in every case" and wrote that the concept of a "prima facie case of obviousness" "most naturally relates to patent prosecution." It repeated that it has "emphatically rejected any formal burden-shifting framework" in evaluating the four Graham factors, and it noted its earlier statement that the "burden-shifting framework does not apply in the adjudicatory context of an IPR." The Board had made no finding that Google's obviousness evidence was "strong" or "overwhelming," and the court saw "no legal error" in the Board's weighing (Op. 15-19).
Claims 18, 20, 27, and 28
For claim 18 of the '075 patent, the court concluded that the Board's construction of "disposed on" did not require direct contact, rejected as erroneous a construction that would reach connections that are "far removed," and affirmed the Board's construction. For claim 20, it affirmed the Board's construction of "lever" as "a stiff body pivoted on a fulcrum," citing an embodiment in the specification and a mechanical engineering dictionary definition the Board credited. Because Google's obviousness argument hinged on its erroneous construction of "lever", the court held that substantial evidence supported the Board's finding on claim 20, and it did not reach Google's challenge to the "guide" limitation (Op. 19-24 and n.7).
For claim 27 of the '001 patent, the court found no Administrative Procedure Act violation. The Board's institution decision had invited more argument and evidence on the "made from a flexible material" limitation, and Google did not further address the claim after institution. Google also did not challenge the Board's determination that it had failed to show that one of the two prior art components it relied on was made from a flexible material, and the court left that determination undisturbed. For claim 28, the court found forfeited Google's argument on appeal for a specific construction of "memory material coupled to the linkage element," because Google did not present it to the Board in the first instance, and affirmed the Board's determination on that claim. The opinion ends with "AFFIRMED" (Op. 24-28).