Invalidity dossier
US 6987370
Method and system for cooling electronic components
Current assignee: SK Hynix Inc
Added 9/17/2026, 2:49:20 PM
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Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 6,987,370 B2
Title: Method and system for cooling electronic components
Patent number: US 6,987,370 B2 (application US10/602,972)
Original assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
Inventors: Sachin Navin Chheda; Stephan Karl Barsun; Ricardo E. Espinoza-Ibarra
Key dates (per the supplied source, which notes priority dates are assumptions): priority/filing date 2003-06-23; pre-grant publication US20040257013A1 on 2004-12-23; granted 2006-01-17. The source lists an anticipated expiration of 2023-06-23 and a status of "Expired - Lifetime."
Purpose: Computers and other electronic devices contain heat-generating components such as processors, memory, and graphics products. Most such components are heat-sensitive and may malfunction or be physically damaged if they become too hot, and safe operating thresholds vary from component to component. The patent addresses thermal management by describing a localized system for dissipating heat generated by an electronic component.
Plain-language scope: The disclosed system includes a controllable cooling element (for example, a fan, blower, turbo cooler, heat sink, or heat spreader) plus a control system that adjusts the cooling element's speed of operation in response to variations in the electronic component's power consumption. Because most power consumed by an integrated circuit results in heat, measuring power consumption allows the system to estimate heat generation. Embodiments may also use the component's temperature as an input, and may employ a closed-loop control scheme in which a tachometer output signal (measured in RPM) is compared with a preset value and used to adjust a control signal. The description notes applications to ICs, chipsets, CPUs, voltage regulators, storage units, disk drives, and input/output devices, and to system-level cooling configurations. Several figures and flow charts are listed.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6987370/en
What the excerpt does not establish: The supplied text is marked as excerpted, so full claim language, the complete detailed description, and the content of the figures (FIGS. 1–9) are not available here. It also does not establish the scope of any specific claim, the number of claims, or the full listing of cited prior art.
Generated 10/1/2026, 10:03:02 PM
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PTAB challenges
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Assignment history
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Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
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