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Parties Involved:
Bret Cahill
Appellant

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit

______________________

IN RE: BRET EDWARD CAHILL,

Appellant

______________________

2024-1745

______________________

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 16/536,313.

______________________

Decided: January 13, 2025

______________________

BRET CAHILL, Brawley, CA, pro se. 

 FAHD H. PATEL, Office of the Solicitor, United States 

Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA, for appellee 

Derrick Brent. Also represented by MONICA BARNES 

LATEEF, AMY J. NELSON, FARHEENA YASMEEN RASHEED. 

 ______________________

Before DYK, PROST, and CUNNINGHAM, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM. 

Bret Cahill appeals pro se from a decision of the United 

States Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”). The 

Board affirmed the rejection of claims 1–7 of U.S. Patent 

Application No. 16/536,313 (“Application”) as indefinite 

under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b), anticipated under 35 U.S.C. 

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2 IN RE: CAHILL

§§ 102(a)(1)–(a)(2), and/or obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103. 

We affirm. 

BACKGROUND

On August 9, 2019, Mr. Cahill filed the Application for 

a patent on an apparatus for injecting high viscosity 

sealant into a tire puncture. The Application included 

seven claims, with claim 1 being the only independent 

claim. During prosecution, claim 1 was amended and as 

amended recites: 

1. An apparatus configured so no part of said 

apparatus can penetrate a pneumatic tire with 

a means of developing pressure to force sealant 

from a vessel for injection of said sealant 

directly into a puncture on said tire.

J.A. 58.1 Among other limitations, the dependent claims 

recite “said vessel is a hollow cylinder” (claim 2), “said 

hollow cylinder contains said sealant” (claim 3), “said 

cylinder has a narrow bore to develop high pressure” (claim 

4), and “said sealant remains a viscous liquid for a long 

time” (claim 6). Id. 

In a final rejection, the Examiner rejected claims 1–7

as indefinite. He first noted that the phrase “configured so 

no part of said apparatus can penetrate a pneumatic tire” 

as used in claim 1 was indefinite because “the capability of 

the apparatus relies upon multiple factors including 

possible forces applied and relative dimensions including 

those of a pneumatic tire e.g. thickness.” J.A. 64. For

claims 4–6, the Examiner explained that the terms 

“narrow bore,” “high pressure,” and “long time” as used in 

1 In setting forth the claims here, Mr. Cahill 

erroneously sets forth the claims as originally filed instead 

of the amended claims that are at issue in this appeal. See, 

e.g., Appellant’s Op. Br. at i. 

Case: 24-1745 Document: 22 Page: 2 Filed: 01/13/2025
IN RE: CAHILL 3

those claims “are relative terms without distinction” while

“clear ranges and/or approximate values are not discussed 

with specificity in the Specification.” J.A. 64–65. He 

determined that claims 5 and 6 did not further limit the 

claim 1 apparatus as they were “merely directed to a 

sealant for use with the apparatus.” J.A. 65. The

Examiner also rejected the claims as anticipated and/or 

obvious under §§ 102, 103.

Mr. Cahill appealed the Examiner’s decision to the 

Board. The Board determined that Mr. Cahill had 

“presented no arguments concerning th[e] [indefiniteness]

rejection” and consequently “summarily affirm[ed]” it. Ex 

parte Bret Edward Cahill, No. 2023-003033, 2024 WL 

726154, at *2 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 20, 2024) (citing Manual of 

Patent Examining Procedure § 1205.02); see also J.A. 4.

The Board also sustained the § 102 and § 103 rejections. 

Mr. Cahill appeals. We have jurisdiction under 

28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A). 

DISCUSSION

We affirm the Board’s decision because Mr. Cahill 

forfeited his argument that the claims are not indefinite, 

and this ground is sufficient to sustain the Board’s decision.

“While the court retains case-by-case discretion over 

whether to apply [forfeiture], we have held that a party 

[forfeits] an argument that it failed to present to the 

[Board] because it deprives the court of the benefit of the 

[Board's] informed judgment.” In re Nuvasive, Inc., 842 

F.3d 1376, 1380 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (internal quotation marks 

and citations omitted); see also In re Google Tech. Holdings 

LLC, 980 F.3d 858, 862–63 (Fed. Cir. 2020). The Examiner 

determined, and the Board affirmed, that claim 1 of the 

Application, from which claims 2–7 depend, was indefinite.

Mr. Cahill did not contest this rejection in his opening brief 

before the Board nor did he contest the separate rejections 

of several of the dependent claims for indefiniteness under 

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4 IN RE: CAHILL

§ 112(b).

2 Instead, his opening brief before the Board was 

devoted to challenging the Examiner’s rejections for 

anticipation and obviousness. 

Mr. Cahill disputes that he did not contest the 

indefiniteness rejections before the Board in his opening 

brief. In support of this argument, he identifies several 

pages of his briefing before the Board that allegedly

address these rejections. Appellant’s Repl. Br. 3 

(identifying J.A. 111–14 and J.A. 133–34). His arguments 

only address the Examiner’s prior art rejections under 

§ 102 and § 103, not § 112(b). The pages are directed to 

Mr. Cahill’s allegations that prior art syringes cannot seal 

punctures with high viscosity sealant and cannot be made 

to work, and that they would be more costly than his 

claimed invention. They do not discuss the Examiner’s 

rejections of, for example, the claim terms “configured so 

no part of said apparatus can penetrate a pneumatic tire” 

and “long time,” nor does Mr. Cahill explain how his 

briefing before the Board addresses those rejections. See 

In re Killian, 45 F.4th 1373, 1386 (Fed. Cir. 2022) (finding 

patent applicant forfeited argument “by failing to present 

anything more than a conclusory, skeletal argument”). 

Mr. Cahill also argues that, in his reply briefing before 

the Board, he addressed some of the Examiner’s 

indefiniteness rejections by offering “numerical 

2 Mr. Cahill now argues that the Examiner is 

responsible for Mr. Cahill’s addition of the “configured so 

no part of said apparatus can penetrate a pneumatic tire”

limitation that the Examiner later found indefinite and 

that the Examiner did not allow him to discuss or further 

amend his claims. But Mr. Cahill did not present these 

arguments to the Board as a challenge to the Examiner’s 

indefiniteness rejections, and they are similarly forfeited. 

See In re Google, 980 F.3d at 862–63. 

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IN RE: CAHILL 5

limitations,” for certain terms, but both the Examiner and 

Board failed to address those numerical limitations. These 

arguments, however, were presented to the Board for the 

first time in reply, and the Board could properly decline to 

consider them. 37 C.F.R. § 41.41(b)(2) (“Any argument 

raised in the reply brief [before the Board] which was not 

raised in the appeal brief, or is not responsive to an 

argument raised in the examiner’s answer . . . will not be 

considered by the Board . . . unless good cause is shown.”); 

see also id. §§ 41.37(c)(1)(iv), (c)(2). 

We have considered Mr. Cahill’s remaining arguments 

and find them unpersuasive. 

AFFIRMED

COSTS

No costs. 

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