Posts Tagged: "obviousness"

The arrival of a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) office action citing no less than six earlier patents directed to various sub-combinations in the features of the main independent claim in an application which I was handling prompted the present note. Readers may recall the decision of Judge Rich In re Winslow 365 F.2d 1017 (C.C.P.A. 1966): “We think the proper way to apply the 103-obviousness test to a case like this is to first picture the inventor as working in his shop with the prior art references — which he is presumed to know — hanging on the walls around him.” However, Boltzmann’s entropy formula S = k log W where S represents entropy, a concept associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty, and W represents the number of possible states in the relevant system, leaves an unforgettable impression on those who have studied it. Even if the fields from which the earlier patents might be selected are restricted to relevant general classifications, the number of combinations of six references which might have been collected together from the body of prior art in the relevant technical field randomly and without knowledge of the invention is mind-boggling.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit yesterday reversed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) finding that Campbell Soup Company, Campbell Sales Company, and Trinity Manufacturing, LLC did not demonstrate the claimed designs of Gamon, Inc.’s design patents would have been obvious over the prior art. The CAFC held that the designs were obvious because Gamon did not prove a nexus between commercial success and the claims, and because the evidence of Trinity’s copying did not overcome the strong evidence of obviousness provided by the prior art.

In The Chemours Company FC, LLC v. Daikin Industries, Ltd., Nos. 2020-1289, 2020-1290 (Fed. Cir. July 22, 2021) (“Chemours v. Daikin”), the Federal Circuit clarified three doctrines involved in the determination of obviousness: teaching away, commercial success, and blocking patents. While all three panel judges agreed that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) misapplied the commercial success and blocking patents doctrines, they disagreed as to the Board’s application of the teaching away doctrine. In contrast to the Board, the majority found evidence of teaching away in the prior art. But Judge Dyk, dissenting, found no such evidence and called the majority’s determination an impermissible expansion of the doctrine that now encompassed a reference’s mere preference for a particular alternative.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere, touching nearly every aspect of our daily lives, including how we work, communicate, shop, travel and more. The term “AI” is generally understood to encompass computerized systems that perform tasks ordinarily perceived as requiring some form of human intelligence. Many AI-based systems are able to recognize trends, patterns and connections, test hypotheses using available data sets, and continuously improve decision trees based on user input. As such, AI has been shown to have near endless applications, driving a surge of inventions and related patent application filings.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) yesterday concluded that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (PTAB’s) decision finding certain claims of Chemours’ patents obvious was not supported by substantial evidence and that the Board erred in its analysis of objective indicia of nonobviousness. As such, the CAFC reversed the decisions.

On May 28, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) reversed a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (Board), holding certain claims of U.S. Patent No. 8,554,579 (the ‘579 patent) are invalid as obvious under 35 U.S.C. §103. Baxter Corporation Englewood (Baxter) is the owner of the ‘579 patent, which discloses “[s]ystems for preparing patient-specific doses and a method for telepharmacy in which data captured while following [a protocol associated with each received drug order and specifying a set of steps to fill the drug order] are provided to a remote site for review and approval by a pharmacist.”

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) reversed an inter partes review (IPR) decision from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO’s) Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in Raytheon Technologies Corporation (Raytheon) v. General Electric Company (GE). The PTAB found claims 3 and 16 of U.S. Patent No. (the ‘751 patent) unpatentable under Section103 as obvious in view of a 1987 NASA technical memorandum (the “Knip” reference). Raytheon submitted evidence that the Knip reference relied on the use of nonexistent composite materials, and thus failed to enable one of ordinary skill in the art to make and use the claimed invention. The PTAB sided with GE, even though GE made no attempt to rebut the evidence presented by Raytheon. The CAFC disagreed.

You cannot get a patent for an invention if it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time. This is as true today as it was at the founding of our nation. The reason for this rule is clear—the obviousness-bar is necessary to balance rewarding innovation with free and fair competition. The Supreme Court has observed, alluding to the Constitution’s authorization for federal patents, “[w]ere it otherwise, patents might stifle, rather than promote, the progress of useful arts.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 427 (2007). While we all agree that obvious inventions should not be patented, the devil is in the details on how to draw that line between the obvious and the nonobvious.

On February 18, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) issued a precedential opinion in an appeal by Canfield Scientific, Inc. (Canfield) from the decision of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or Board) on inter partes review (IPR) of U.S. Patent No. 7,359,748 (the ‘748 patent) owned by Melanoscan, LLC. The court held that the Board erred in ruling that all the claims of the ‘748 patent were patentable. The decision was reversed with respect to the independent claims and vacated and remanded as to the dependent claims.

“Teaching away” is a concept important to obviousness analysis under U.S. patent law. “Teaching away” basically bears upon the issue of motivation to combine elements in a manner set out by a patent claim, and such motivation is relevant to obviousness analysis but not to anticipation analysis: would one skilled in the art have had reason (or motivation) to put the known elements in the arrangement that the inventor has claimed? In a sense, “teaching away” is an anti-motivation, as it weighs against such an arrangement…. The question I propose to address is: Does the jurisprudence concerning “teaching away”—particularly the jurisprudence pertaining to whether a reference does or does not “teach away”—make any sense? And if not, what ought to replace it?

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on February 1 held in part that the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (UPSTO) Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) erred in finding a claim anticipated when the petition for inter partes review had only asserted obviousness as to the claim. M&K Holdings, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (CAFC, Feb 1, 2020). The CAFC vacated the PTAB’s decision on that claim but affirmed the holding of unpatentability as to the rest of the asserted claims.

On January 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) affirmed in-part and vacated in-part a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) in its inter partes review of claims 1—20 of U.S. Patent No. 8,370,106 (the ‘106 patent) assigned to KEYnetik, Inc. (KEYnetik). Judge O’Malley concurred in part and dissented in part. In particular, the CAFC concluded that the PTAB did not err in its claim construction regarding an orientation detection limitation and a sequence limitation. Further, the CAFC affirmed the PTAB’s decision that the Petitioner’s references could be combined. However, the CAFC also found that the PTAB failed to properly assess the appellant’s argument regarding a reasonable expectation of success when combining references and therefore vacated the decision and remanded the case so that the Board could make such a determination.

While China is becoming an increasingly attractive patent filing destination for foreign companies, foreign counsels are often confused by the country’s inventive step requirement. Indeed, Chinese patent examiners often use abstract legal terms, such as “prominent substantive features” and “notable progress,” in their inventive step analysis. This article provides an overview of the inventive step requirement in China, in comparison with the non-obviousness standard in the United States.

On November 25, the Federal Circuit affirmed a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in VidStream LLC v. Twitter, Inc., in which the PTAB held VidStream’s patent claims unpatentable as obvious over the applied prior art. In particular, the CAFC affirmed the PTAB’s holding that Twitter properly established an earlier filing date of a reference based on evidence submitted in a reply brief.

On November 17 the Federal Circuit affirmed a determination of the PTAB that claims were obvious in view of the prior art in an appeal that was returned to the CAFC on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court. In particular, the CAFC concluded that, according to the recent Supreme Court decision in Thryv, Inc. v. Click-to-Call Technologies, LP, “§ 324(e) prohibits judicial review of SIPCO’s challenge because it is nothing more than a contention that the agency should have refused to institute [covered business method] CBM review.”