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Parties Involved:
Eveready Battery Company, Inc.
Appellant
Spectrum Brands, Inc.
Appellee

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

EVEREADY BATTERY COMPANY, INC.,

Appellant

v.

SPECTRUM BRANDS, INC.,

Appellee

______________________ 

2015-1824

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 95/001,683.

______________________ 

Decided: May 31, 2016

______________________ 

DAVID BOGDAN CUPAR, McDonald Hopkins LLC, 

Cleveland, OH, argued for appellant. Also represented by 

ROBERT BARAONA, MATTHEW JOHN CAVANAGH. 

DEBORAH ANN STERLING, Sterne Kessler Goldstein & 

Fox, PLLC, Washington, DC, argued for appellee. Also 

represented by ROBERT GREENE STERNE, NIRAV DESAI. 

______________________ 

Case: 15-1824 Document: 54-2 Page: 1 Filed: 05/31/2016
 2 EVEREADY BATTERY CO., INC. v. SPECTRUM BRANDS, INC. 

Before WALLACH, BRYSON, and TARANTO, Circuit 

Judges.

BRYSON, Circuit Judge. 

Eveready Battery Company, Inc., appeals from a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeals Board in an inter 

partes reexamination. The Board held all the claims of 

Eveready’s U.S. Patent No. 6,849,360 (“the ’360 patent”)

invalid for obviousness. We affirm.

I 

The ’360 patent is directed to a lithium/iron disulfide 

(“Li/FeS2”) electrochemical cell or battery. Li/FeS2 cells 

were well known when the application for the ’360 patent 

was filed on June 5, 2002.1 The claimed invention of the

’360 patent is focused on improving the design of such

cells. Specifically, the patent describes the need for a 

Li/FeS2 cell “with an increased energy density and discharge efficiency that accommodates the volume increase 

of the reaction products generated during discharge.” ’360 

patent, col. 2, ll. 7-9.

The patent’s background section asserts that a “key 

challenge” in designing an improved Li/FeS2 cell is the

efficient use of the cell’s internal volume. Id., col. 1, ll. 27-

28. That challenge arises because a Li/FeS2 cell generates

chemical reaction byproducts when it produces electricity. 

The accumulation of the reaction byproducts can cause a 

battery to swell; as a result, it is necessary for the cell 

design to incorporate sufficient void spaces to accommo1 Section 14.10 of the 1995 edition of a standard 

text in the field, David Linden, Handbook of Batteries, is 

dedicated to such cells. Li/FeS2 consumer AA cells were 

standardized in the American National Standards Institute’s C18.3M, Part 1-1999 standard. 

 

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EVEREADY BATTERY CO., INC. v. SPECTRUM BRANDS, INC. 3

date the expansion. Id., col. 1, ll. 28-32. That space is 

generally lost to more productive uses.

The ’360 patent asserts that a cell with improved performance was “achieved, surprisingly, with an anode 

underbalance,” i.e., with less anode capacity than cathode 

capacity. Id., abstract. According to the patent, conventional Li/FeS2 cells were “typically . . . overbalance[d],” 

i.e., they had more anode capacity than cathode capacity. 

Id., col. 2, ll. 1-2.

Claim 1 of the ’360 patent, the only independent 

claim, reads as follows:

An electrochemical cell comprising 

a cathode assembly, said cathode assembly comprising a metallic cathode current collector having 

two major surfaces and a cathode coating disposed 

on at least one of said two major surfaces, said 

coating comprising iron disulfide, 

said cell further comprising a metallic lithium anode alloyed with aluminum, 

wherein the anode to cathode input ratio is less

than or equal to 1.0.

In 2011, Spectrum Brands filed a petition for inter 

partes reexamination challenging the validity of all of the 

’360 patent’s claims. During the reexamination, Eveready 

canceled claims 14-22 and added claims 23-37. Those 

changes eliminated all of independent claims except for 

claim 1. In a lengthy opinion, the examiner found that 

the remaining claims would have been obvious in view of 

a number of different combinations of references. 

Eveready appealed the examiner’s rejections of 

claim 1 to the Board. Eveready’s appeal did not include 

any substantive discussion of the rejected dependent 

claims. The Board affirmed the examiner’s determination

that claim 1 was invalid for obviousness in light of (1) a 

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 4 EVEREADY BATTERY CO., INC. v. SPECTRUM BRANDS, INC. 

European Patent Application known as Gan; (2) the 

combination of U.S. patents to Leger, Georgopoulos, and

Munshi; and (3) a U.S. patent to Smesko. The Board 

found that Eveready had not made a separate argument

with respect to any of the dependent claims, and it therefore affirmed those rejections without discussion. 

On appeal to this court, Eveready asserts that the 

Board erred in affirming those rejections.2 

II

We focus on whether claim 1 would have been obvious 

in light of Gan, the European Patent Application. Gan is 

directed to the control of swelling in electrochemical cells 

that use alkali metals, such as lithium. The discussion in 

Gan centers on reducing swelling in lithium/silver vana2 In the Statement of the Issues section of its brief, 

Eveready states in two footnotes that it is appealing not 

only the rejection of claim 1, but also the separate rejections of all of the dependent claims. However, in the 

Argument section of its brief Eveready makes no separate 

substantive argument with respect to the dependent 

claims. Nor does Eveready challenge the Board’s ruling 

that Eveready failed to challenge rejections VII to XX, 

which were directed to the dependent claims. A footnote 

allusion to combinations of references, without more, does 

not present a cognizable argument on appeal, see Kennametal, Inc. v. Ingersoll Cutting Tool Co., 780 F.3d 1376, 

1383 (Fed. Cir. 2015), nor may a party raise in this court 

rejections that it did not appeal to the Board, see In re 

Watts, 354 F.3d 1362, 1367 (Fed. Cir. 2004). Accordingly, 

with respect to the dependent claims that were rejected 

based on combinations of prior art using Gan as the 

primary reference, we treat Eveready’s argument as 

confined to its challenge to the Board’s analysis of Gan.

 

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EVEREADY BATTERY CO., INC. v. SPECTRUM BRANDS, INC. 5

dium oxide (“Li/SVO”) cells by managing the creation of 

decomposition products.

A 

Eveready first argues that Gan applies only to Li/SVO 

cells and not to cells using other cathode materials, such 

as Li/FeS2. Eveready does not dispute that Gan is directed to swelling in lithium cells or that swelling is a key 

concern in designing a Li/FeS2 cell. In fact, Eveready 

acknowledges that the swelling issue in Li/FeS2 cells is 

even greater than in Li/SVO cells. Instead, Eveready 

argues that a person of ordinary skill in the art would not 

have applied Gan to Li/FeS2 cells because of the differences in battery chemistry between Li/FeS2 cells and 

Li/SVO cells. 

The Board concluded that Gan is not limited to 

Li/SVO cells. Instead, the Board noted that although Gan 

discusses the Li/SVO electrochemical cell “as an illustrated embodiment of the invention, Gan discloses generally 

that the invention relates to balancing the anode-tocathode (“A/C”) capacity ratio in order to improve cell 

swelling in alkali metal electrochemical cells.” Moreover, 

the Board pointed out that Gan explicitly refers to Li/FeS2

cells when stating that “[a]dditional cathode active materials useful with the present invention include . . . iron 

disulfide.”3 The Board’s ruling on that issue is consistent 

with the examiner’s findings that claim 1 of Gan is not 

limited to Li/SVO cells and that Gan’s claims generally 

cover cells with an A/C capacity ratio of less than 1.0, 

including such Li/FeS2 cells. 

3 Gan states that the cathode may “comprise a metal element, a metal oxide, a mixed metal oxide, and a 

metal sulfide, and combinations thereof”; iron disulfide is 

listed as one of ten specifically identified cathode materials. 

 

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 6 EVEREADY BATTERY CO., INC. v. SPECTRUM BRANDS, INC. 

In making its findings, the Board considered extensive record materials besides Gan, including competing 

expert declarations. Those declarations included explanations of why Gan would be applicable to Li/FeS2 cells. 

Spectrum’s expert explained that while the swelling 

problem in Li/SVO cells is different from the swelling 

problem in Li/FeS2 cells, Gan nonetheless “generally 

teaches that one achieves the best performance at a 

selected end point voltage, by properly balancing the 

anode to cathode capacity.” He added that a person of 

ordinary skill could apply Gan’s teaching to Li/FeS2 cells 

using well known practices.

In addition, as the examiner noted, the record contains statements by Eveready that Gan discloses a 

Li/FeS2 cell and that a person of ordinary skill would take 

the disclosure of Gan into account in creating an improved 

Li/FeS2 cell. In proceedings before the European Patent 

Office on essentially the same patent application, Eveready stated that Gan appeared to be the closest prior art 

as it was “directed to the same technical problem(s).”4 

Eveready conceded that Gan “discloses electrochemical 

cells containing a lithium anode, an FeS2 cathode arranged on a current collector and further containing a 

non-aqueous electrolyte.” Eveready also stated that Gan 

was “directed to maintaining the discharge capacity while 

4 Those statements were made in conjunction with 

a challenge to EP 1,518,287. The statements concerned 

both Gan and U.S. Patent No. 6,171,729, which was 

derived from Gan. The application for the European 

patent included a specification and claims that were 

substantively identical to those in the ’360 patent. See 

WO 2003/105255. The claims in EP 1,518,287 were

amended to add more precise limitations than claim 1 of 

the ’360 patent, including a specific formula for calculating the A/C input ratio.

 

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EVEREADY BATTERY CO., INC. v. SPECTRUM BRANDS, INC. 7

minimizing swelling during discharge.” Eveready admitted that “a person skilled in the art striving to solve the 

problem of maintaining or improving discharge capacity 

in a system that experiences swelling would have taken 

into account the disclosure of [Gan].” 

In light of the evidence before the Board, we hold that 

substantial evidence supports the Board’s finding that a 

person of ordinary skill in the art would have considered 

the teaching of Gan to be applicable to Li/FeS2 cells. 

B 

Eveready next argues that Gan does not disclose an 

anode-to-cathode input ratio less than or equal to 1.0. 

The examiner found that the claim term “anode to cathode input ratio” should be construed to mean “the anode 

capacity divided by the cathode capacity, wherein the 

anode and cathode capacities are determined based on the 

interfacial area, i.e., the portions of the anode and cathode 

which overlap with each other.” That construction is not 

disputed on appeal. Instead, Eveready asserts that the 

Board erred in finding that there was sufficient evidence 

to show that the “interfacial ratio” portion of the limitation, as construed, is taught by Gan. 

Gan addresses the ratio of the total amount of anode 

to the total amount of cathode and teaches that the total 

A/C ratio should be between about 0.68 and 0.96. According to Eveready, the total A/C ratio is unrelated to the 

interfacial A/C ratio, because there are situations in 

which the total amounts of anode and cathode material in 

a cell can be quite different from the amounts of anode 

and cathode material that are in an interfacial relationship. The examiner and the Board found that the battery 

structure disclosed in Gan answers that argument.

The examiner found that Gan discloses a battery design known as the “jellyroll.” That design consists of a 

spirally wound structure of anode and cathode strips

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 8 EVEREADY BATTERY CO., INC. v. SPECTRUM BRANDS, INC. 

facing one another. The following figure from one of the 

prior art references in the record provides an example of 

the jellyroll design: 

The examiner found that the anode and cathode in the 

jellyroll structure are similarly sized and almost completely interfacial to one another (as seen in the figure 

above). The examiner also found that the record reflected 

that it would be wasteful, and even counterproductive, to 

have a significant amount of non-interfacial area in such 

a structure, as non-interfacial elements generate no 

reaction and take up space. The examiner concluded that

it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in 

the art “to prepare Gan’s electrochemical cell in jellyroll 

form such that the cathode and anode are similar in size 

with little cathode not in interfacial relationship with 

anode so as to ensure optimal discharge rates and avoid 

waste of material.” In that configuration, the examiner 

found, “Gan’s anode to cathode capacity ratio of about 

0.68 to about 0.96 would be equivalent to or very close to” 

the interfacial A/C ratio, and thus render obvious the 

claimed A/C input ratio of less than or equal to 1.0.

The Board agreed with the examiner that the total 

A/C ratio would be closely correlated to the interfacial A/C 

ratio in a jellyroll battery. As the Board explained, “combining the concept of an anode limited cell as taught by 

Gan[] with an electrochemical cell having substantial 

overlap between the cathode and anode would have 

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EVEREADY BATTERY CO., INC. v. SPECTRUM BRANDS, INC. 9

resulted in the interfacial A/C ratio recited in the claims.” 

The Board added that the claims of the ’360 patent did 

not require any specific ratio—only that the ratio not be 

overbalanced by having an excess of anode capacity. 

The Board’s findings are supported by substantial evidence. The record contains ample evidence that Gan 

discloses a jellyroll cell, that the A/C input ratio of a 

jellyroll cell is closely correlated to the total A/C ratio in 

the cell, that Gan teaches an A/C ratio less than or equal 

to 1.0, and that the principles of Gan apply to a Li/FeS2

cell. In light of that evidence, we affirm the Board’s 

finding that claim 1 of the ’360 patent would have been

obvious in view of Gan.

III

Because we find that the Board did not err in its affirmance of Gan, we need not address whether the Board 

was correct in affirming the rejections of claim 1 in light 

of Smesko or the combination of Leger, Georgopoulos, and 

Munshi.

AFFIRMED

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