Micron Technology, Inc., Micron Semiconductor Products, Inc., and Micron Technology Texas, LLC appealed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's November 13, 2024 final written decision in IPR2023-00900, and Intel Corporation appealed the Board's December 11, 2024 final written decision in IPR2023-00991. Both decisions held that the petitioners did not show the challenged claims of BeSang Inc.'s U.S. Patent No. 7,378,702 unpatentable (Op. 1-3). Both petitions challenged claims 13-17, and Intel also challenged claim 1 (Op. 4).
The claims
Claim 13 recites a semiconductor memory structure with a substrate, "a stackable add-on layer having a plurality of vertically oriented semiconductor memory cells" bonded to a dielectric layer, and "nonvolatile memory cells having at least one transistor." Claim 1 requires memory cells "separated from each other by dielectric material" and a DRAM memory cell (Op. 3-4).
What the court held
Writing for a panel of Circuit Judges Lourie, Reyna, and Hughes in Micron Technology, Inc. v. BeSang Inc., Nos. 2025-1320, 2025-1377 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 30, 2026) (nonprecedential), Judge Lourie held that substantial evidence supports the Board's finding that the Watanabe reference was not enabled, based on expert testimony that its 900-1000 degree C bonding process would risk destroying the underlying electronic components. The court said that was "a conclusion on enablement, not claim construction" (Op. 6-7). It also upheld the Board's finding of no motivation to combine Watanabe with the Lee Patent (Op. 8-9).
In Intel's appeal, the court held that Intel did not appeal the Board's finding that the Lee Application does not teach limitation 13[b], and that the Board did not abuse its discretion in reading the petition (Op. 10-11). On claim 1, the court held that the Board compared the Park reference to the claim text rather than implicitly construing it, and that Park's figures support the Board's finding (Op. 11-12). The judgment: "AFFIRMED" (Op. 12).