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Parties Involved:
Lawnie H. Taylor
Appellant

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

IN RE: LAWNIE H. TAYLOR,

Appellant

______________________ 

2015-1582

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 13/067,574.

______________________ 

Decided: November 6, 2015 

______________________ 

LAWNIE H. TAYLOR, Germantown, MD, pro se.

THOMAS W. KRAUSE, Office of the Solicitor, United 

States Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA, for 

appellee Michelle K. Lee. Also represented by KRISTI L. R.

SAWERT, FRANCES LYNCH. 

______________________ 

Before O’MALLEY and TARANTO, Circuit Judges, and 

STARK, District Judge.1

1 The Honorable Leonard P. Stark, Chief District 

Judge, United States District Court for the District of 

Delaware, sitting by designation.

 

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2 IN RE: TAYLOR

PER CURIAM. 

Lawnie Taylor filed an application with the Patent 

and Trademark Office to reissue his patent with altered 

claims broader than his original claims. The patent 

examiner and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board each 

concluded that the proposed claims were anticipated by 

prior art and so rejected his application. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

Mr. Taylor owns U.S. Patent No. 7,582,597. The patent claims address products (or methods for modifying 

them) that contain a hypochlorite salt, such as NaOCl, 

commonly known as “bleach,” and an alkali metal hydroxide, such as sodium hydroxide, NaOH. It claims certain 

mixtures of those two components based on the ratio of 

their concentrations in the solution measured by weight.

Within two years of receiving his patent, Mr. Taylor 

applied to the PTO for a broadening reissue under 35 

U.S.C. § 251. He sought to broaden his original claims by

changing the closed “consists of” transitional language to 

the open “comprises” language, thus covering solutions 

containing other elements in addition to the two originally 

covered. He also added a claim reference to the “weight 

concentration ratio” correlating to how damaging the 

resulting solution is to fabrics. And he changed some 

claimed weight concentration ratios (of the bleach over 

the hydroxide), as in representative claims 1 and 19, 

which originally required a ratio of at least 1:12.5 and, in 

the reissue claim, specified a ratio of between 1:30 and 

1:1. 

Claim 19, which is representative, claims:

An aqueous hypochlorite salt bleach product 

for cleaning a soft fabric article:

the solution of said product formulated with a 

weight concentration ratio of alkali-metal hydroxide over alkali-metal hypochlorite-salt,

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IN RE: TAYLOR 3

said weight concentration ratio correlating to 

the quality of fabric safety of the product solution 

selected within the range of damaging to abated 

damage to cotton-safe,

wherein the product solution comprises,

(a) an effective amount of hypochlorite salt, for 

cleaning a soft fabric article[,]

(b) a quantity of alkali-metal hydroxide as determined by (a) and (c),

(c) the weight concentration ratio 1:30 to 1:1[.] 

A patent examiner rejected the claims at issue here. 

The Board affirmed. It found anticipation of claim 19 

(and hence all other claims at issue) by each of three 

different prior-art references, agreeing with the determinations of the examiner. 

Taylor filed a timely appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 141(a). 

This court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1295(a)(4)(A). 

DISCUSSION

Anticipation requires that all elements of the claim, 

as arranged in the claim, be found explicitly or inherently 

in a single prior-art reference, and anticipation presents a 

question of fact. In re Schreiber, 128 F.3d 1473, 1477 

(Fed. Cir. 1997). We affirm the Board’s factual findings if 

they are supported by substantial evidence, i.e., “such 

relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might accept as 

adequate to support a conclusion.” In re Jolley, 308 F.3d 

1317, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (internal quotations omitted). 

Here, we hold, the Board’s findings of anticipation by each 

of Scialla, Agostini, and Grande (the prior-art patents) 

were supported by substantial evidence.

For example, Scialla (U.S. Patent No. 6,120,555) discloses a bleaching product “suitable for the bleaching of 

different types of fabrics including natural fabrics,” such 

as “cotton.” ’555 patent, col. 1, lines 61–64. The product 

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includes an alkali-metal hydroxide (such as NaOH) and 

an alkali-metal hypochlorite salt (such as bleach). Id. col. 

5, lines 39–47; col. 3, lines 58–62. One example shows a 

solution of which 1.4 percent (by weight) is NaOH and 2.5 

percent (by weight) is bleach. Id. col. 8, lines 16–25. The 

ratio of those weight concentrations (1.4% divided by 

2.5%) is 0.56, which is 1:1.79—a ratio between 1:1 and 

1:30. Scialla thus teaches a product that meets all the 

requirements for the product claimed in Mr. Taylor’s 

claim 19. So do Agostini and Grande, teaching weight 

concentrations that arithmetically give ratios of 1:1.79

and 1:2.92, as well as the required safety for fabrics such 

as cotton. See U.S. Patent No. 6,416,687, col. 10, lines 19-

43; U.S. Patent No. 6,448,215, col. 19, lines 40-67.

Each of those prior-art patents anticipates. “[W]hen, 

as by a recitation of ranges or otherwise, a claim covers 

several compositions, the claim is ‘anticipated’ if one of 

them is in the prior art.” Titanium Metals Corp. of Am. v. 

Banner, 778 F.2d 775, 778 (Fed. Cir. 1985). Mr. Taylor’s 

claim 19 covers compositions disclosed by each of Scialla, 

Agostini, and Grande.

Because claim 19 claims a product, a prior-art product 

that has the claimed defining characteristics falls within 

the claim. Here, nothing material to anticipation is added 

by the “correlating” aspect of the claim element: “weight 

concentration ratio correlating to the quality of fabric 

safety of the product solution selected with the range of 

damaging to abated damage to cotton-safe.” That aspect 

does no more than assert that there is some association 

between a chemical feature and a performance property of 

the claimed product, but the association does not alter 

what the product is or even does. If the product is old, 

such a newly discovered fact about the association between its components or functions does not remove it from 

the domain of prior-art products. See Atlas Powder Co. v. 

Ireco, Inc., 190 F.3d 1342, 1347 (Fed. Cir. 1999) (“[T]he 

discovery of a previously unappreciated property of a prior 

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art composition, or of a scientific explanation for the prior 

art’s functioning, does not render the old composition 

patentably new to the discoverer.”). 

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of 

the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.

AFFIRMED

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