Posts Tagged: "teach away"

Michael Meiresonne (“Meiresonne”) appealed from the final inter partes review (“IPR”) decision of the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”). The Board held that certain claims of the underlying patent were unpatentable as obvious… The Court stated that neither prior art reference said or implied that combining their teachings, especially for the “rollover viewing area” would be “‘unreliable,’ ‘misleading,’ ‘wrong,’ or ‘inaccurate,’ and which might lead one of ordinary skill in the art to discard” the combination. Thus, the references did not discourage a person of ordinary skill in the art from making the combination.

While Dome’s argument against obviousness based on Tanaka teaching away was plausible, it was not sufficient to overcome the district court’s factual findings that a person of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine the identified prior art to arrive at the claimed invention. Accordingly, the Federal Circuit affirmed.