Value Delivered
The comprehensive investigation successfully identified relevant prior art, using the term “embedded security” as a key discovery. The findings helped build a robust case, addressing the search challenge effectively and proving crucial for the client’s legal and strategic position.
Problems Solved
Exploring prior art related to the JEDEC e-MMC standards posed significant challenges. Initial efforts involved searching the JEDEC website using key terms like “Embedded multimedia card” or “e-MMC,” aiming to find documents relevant to internal storage device ICs that store critical data. However, all documents located were dated after the cut-off date.
Further investigation into other sections of the JEDEC website, including the history section, revealed that the e-MMC standard was published in 2006. This raised the puzzling question: why were relevant documents from 2006 not present on the JEDEC official site?
This discrepancy created a significant obstacle, leading to uncertainty about the next search strategy.
Solution Offered
To tackle the issue of missing 2006 documents on the JEDEC site, multiple potential reasons were considered. One theory was that older versions might have been removed from the site. Another scenario involved the merger of MMCA with JEDEC in 2008, which could explain the absence of pre-2008 MMCA documents on the JEDEC site.
Exploring this latter possibility, the archived site of MMCA was examined. Although MMCA was no longer active, it was found to have been involved in multimedia cards before the cut-off date of April 2006, just one month before the critical cut-off date. Further investigation into the archived MMCA site revealed a comprehensive list of related products and companies.
Further decoding the archived websites of these companies led to the discovery of a new term, “embedded security.” This term provided a valuable lead to uncover relevant prior art in this case.
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