Lenovo and Motorola Petition for Inter Partes Review of All 14 Claims of a Hannibal IP DRX Power Saving Patent.

The parties and the patent

The proceeding is Lenovo (United States) Inc. v. Hannibal IP LLC, IPR2026-00517. The petitioners are Lenovo (United States) Inc. and Motorola Mobility LLC. The petition names those two companies and Lenovo Group Limited as the real parties in interest, and it identifies one further company without conceding that it is a real party in interest. It names Hannibal IP LLC as the patent owner. U.S. Patent 11,997,597 is titled Method of Monitoring Physical Downlink Control Channel for Power Saving Signal and Related Device. The petition asks the Board to institute review and cancel claims 1 to 14.

What the claims cover

Claim 1 covers a method for a user equipment (UE) monitoring a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) for power saving signaling. The UE receives a discontinuous reception (DRX) configuration from a base station to configure monitoring of a scheduling signal on the PDCCH within a DRX active time, and receives a power saving signaling configuration that includes a time offset between a start of a nearest power saving signaling and a start of a DRX on-duration time. The UE monitors the PDCCH for the power saving signaling when that time offset is greater than a required time duration, and wakes up to monitor the PDCCH for the scheduling signal in the DRX active time in accordance with the DRX configuration in response to receiving a power saving signaling. Claim 8 is a parallel UE claim with a transceiver, a processor, and a non-transitory machine-readable medium. Claims 2, 3, 9, and 10 address reporting the required time duration, including through a UE capability report. Claims 4 and 11 list timers and windows that the DRX active time includes. Claims 5, 6, 12, and 13 address not monitoring during an overlapping configured measurement gap and waking up when the UE does not detect the power saving signaling during that gap. Claims 7 and 14 tie the DRX on-duration time to a running DRX on-duration timer.

The grounds

The petition raises six obviousness grounds under 35 U.S.C. 103. Ground 1 asserts that International Publication WO2019/216699 A1 to Hwang (Hwang699) renders claims 1 to 3 and 8 to 10 obvious. Ground 2 pairs Hwang699 with Qualcomm's 3GPP contribution R1-1905031 (Qualcomm031) against the same claims. Grounds 3 and 4 challenge claims 4, 5, 7, 11, 12, and 14 over Hwang699, alone or with Qualcomm031, in further view of 3GPP TS 38.321 v15.6.0. Grounds 5 and 6 challenge claims 6 and 13 over Hwang699, alone or with Qualcomm031, in further view of TS 38.321 v15.6.0 and Ericsson's 3GPP contribution R1-1905466 (Ericsson466). The petition relies on an expert declaration and states that none of the references relied on in the grounds was before the Examiner.

The related Eastern District of Texas case

Hannibal IP LLC sued Lenovo Group Ltd. on June 3, 2026, in Hannibal IP, LLC v. Lenovo Group Ltd., No. 2:26-cv-00442 (E.D. Tex.), asserting the '597 patent and five other patents. The complaint alleges that Lenovo products capable of supporting the 3GPP 5G standard, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones sold under the Lenovo and Motorola brands, infringe, and that they infringe at least claim 8 of the '597 patent through their practice of that standard. It describes Lenovo (United States) Inc. and Motorola Mobility LLC as Lenovo Group's wholly owned subsidiaries, pleads willful infringement, and alleges that Lenovo had notice of the '597 patent as of November 14, 2024. Lenovo Group answered on September 23, 2026, and the court entered a docket control order on October 16, 2026. The '597 patent, which issued May 28, 2024, is a continuation of Application No. 16/991,015, filed August 11, 2020, now U.S. Patent 11,665,639, and also claims priority to Provisional Application No. 62/886,797.

What to watch next

Watch for the notice according the petition a filing date, any preliminary response from Hannibal under 37 CFR 42.107, any discretionary denial briefing under the USPTO's interim Director discretionary process, and the institution decision under 35 U.S.C. 314. Watch the Eastern District of Texas docket in No. 2:26-cv-00442 for further proceedings on the '597 patent. The IPR can end at any time, including by settlement or dismissal.