Pro Se Inventor Asks CAFC to Rehear Decision Invalidating Remote Device Finder Claims

Carrie Hafeman, an independent inventor who has been fighting a years-long patent battle against Google and Microsoft, has filed a petition for rehearing or rehearing en banc of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s (CAFC’s) June 2026 precedential decision affirming Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions invalidating all claims of three of her patents. Hafeman is pursuing her case pro se after her attorneys recently withdrew.

In June, the CAFC affirmed the decisions and also dismissed Hafeman’s argument that the inter partes reviews (IPRs) should have been terminated based on the district court’s finding that LG–a real party in interest to the IPRs–violated its Sotera stipulation.

The patents at issue are Nos. 10,325,122, 10,789,393, and 9,892,287, which share a common specification and relate to methods for displaying owner contact and recovery information on a computer screen at boot-up to assist in returning a lost or stolen device. The representative ‘122 patent describes a system in which a return screen is automatically shown before or alongside a lock screen, and in which the owner can remotely update the displayed information without any action by the user of the computer.

In July 2021, Hafeman filed a lawsuit against LG Electronics Inc. in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, accusing LG-manufactured phones, tablets, and laptops preloaded with Google and Microsoft “Find My Device” features of infringing the three patents. Google and Microsoft responded in July 2022 by filing six inter partes review (IPR) petitions against the patents, naming LG as a real party in interest. LG filed a Sotera stipulation agreeing not to pursue in district court any ground that Google or Microsoft raised or reasonably could have raised in the IPRs, and the Board instituted six IPRs in January 2023.

The district court later found that LG violated the Sotera stipulation and Hafeman argued the violation warranted terminating the IPRs, or at a minimum, that the Board’s final written decisions should address why the proceedings should continue. The Board issued its three FWDs in January 2024 without revisiting those arguments, finding the claims of all three patents unpatentable over two prior art references, and the Federal Circuit affirmed in June.

In her petition for rehearing, Hafeman primarily argues that the CAFC “overlooked or misapprehended the relationship among the words of the complete limitation” and that the decision cannot be reconciled with the en banc holding in Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1312–15 (Fed. Cir. 2005). Specifically, Hafeman says that the CAFC panel “severed the recited remote-communication requirement from the assistance inquiry.” The relevant language of claim 1 requires:

“initiating or changing return information which appears on the display through remote communication without assistance by a user with the computer, wherein the changing of the return information is done through an interactive program stored in the memory of the computer which is remotely accessed only by the owner of the computer or the party authorized by the owner to enable the initiating or changing of the display screen.”

The CAFC held that “without assistance by a user” modifies the action of “initiating or changing return information” and determined that the establishment of an Internet connection was an “unrecited action” outside of the limitation. But Hafeman contends in her petition that “the initiating or changing is expressly required to occur ‘through remote communication.’” If the relevant prior art cannot make the remote change unless the device user first logs in or establishes the connection, the petition argues, the court must decide whether that act amounts to assistance to the claimed change.

Hafeman says her interpretation is supported by the claim as a whole because the return information must be displayed before or with a lock screen; the change must be made through a program stored on the computer and remotely accessible only by the owner or an authorized party; and the security prompt must prevent the user from operatively accessing the computer. Read together, she argues, these limitations describe an owner-controlled recovery system intended to show return information to a finder while protecting the owner’s data. The specification’s boot-up sequence and discussion of automatic updating do not, in her view, justify treating every user action needed to enable remote communication as irrelevant.

The petition also points to the prosecution history. Hafeman added the “through remote communication without assistance” language to distinguish prior art requiring a user to press an interrupt key to initiate a remote change. She argues that this confirms user participation in enabling the change matters, even if the history addressed a different specific act.

The issue is outcome-determinative, Hafeman maintains, because the Board relied on Jenne as teaching a remote change without user assistance, while she argued to the CAFC that Jenne requires the user to log in and connect to the Internet. After adopting its construction, the panel declined to reach her dependent arguments that the Jenne-Cohen combination does not satisfy the limitation.

Relying chiefly on Phillips; Bicon, Inc. v. Straumann Co., 441 F.3d 945, 950 (Fed. Cir. 2006); and Google LLC v. EcoFactor, Inc., 92 F.4th 1049, 1056–59 (Fed. Cir. 2024), the petition contends that the precedential opinion conflicts with settled claim-construction law requiring courts to construe disputed language in the context of the entire claim and give effect to every limitation. It explains:

“Phillips requires disputed language to be construed in the context of the whole claim and intrinsic record…. Bicon requires proper effect to be given to all claim terms…. EcoFactor confirms, in the IPR context, that resolving the scope or boundary of a disputed limitation is claim construction even when the issue arises during comparison to prior art…. The petition asks the Court to apply those principles to the complete phrase before deciding whether the prior art satisfies it.”

Hafeman ultimately asks the panel to withdraw or amend the opinion and remand for reconsideration under the complete phrase. Alternatively, she seeks en banc review of “whether a tribunal may categorically exclude a user act necessary to establish the recited remote communication from the assistance inquiry without determining whether that act assists the claimed initiating or changing through that communication.”

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Author: 72soul