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Parties Involved:
ACCO Brands Corporation
Appellant
Fellowes, Inc.
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

ACCO BRANDS CORPORATION,

Appellant

v.

FELLOWES, INC.,

Appellee

______________________ 

2015-1045

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 95/001,723.

______________________ 

Decided: February 22, 2016 

______________________ 

 STEVEN R. TRYBUS, Jenner & Block LLP, Chicago, IL, 

argued for appellant. Also represented by MICHAEL GLENN 

BABBITT, PETER J. BRENNAN; RICHARD L. KAISER, Michael 

Best & Friedrich LLP, Waukesha, WI.

 BRYAN PATRICK COLLINS, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw 

Pittman LLP, McLean, VA, argued for appellee. Also 

represented by WILLIAM P. ATKINS, ROBERT M. FUHRER. 

______________________ 

Before NEWMAN, CHEN, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges.

CHEN, Circuit Judge. 

Case: 15-1045 Document: 40-2 Page: 1 Filed: 02/22/2016
2 ACCO BRANDS CORPORATION v. FELLOWES, INC. 

This case arises from an inter partes reexamination 

that ACCO Brands Corporation (ACCO) sought—and the 

Patent and Trademark Office instituted—against a patent owned by Fellowes, Inc. (Fellowes). After the examiner rejected four claims on obviousness grounds, 

Fellowes appealed to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board 

(Board). The Board reversed the rejections, finding that 

the examiner had failed to make a prima facie showing of 

obviousness. We reverse this finding and hold that the 

examiner made this prima facie showing. We remand the 

Board’s decision so it may further consider two issues that 

it did not reach below: (1) whether Fellowes’ rebuttal 

evidence changes the outcome on obviousness and (2) 

whether the dependent claims at issue provide independent grounds of nonobviousness.

BACKGROUND

ACCO and Fellowes compete in the paper shredder 

business. Fellowes obtained U.S. Patent No. 7,963,468,

(the ’468 patent) claiming a shredder that prevents paper 

jams using a combination of two sensors. One, a presence 

sensor, detects whether paper is present in the shredder’s 

feed. The other, a thickness sensor, detects whether the 

stack of paper in the feed is thick enough to risk exceeding the shredder’s capacity. The patent further claims a 

controller that turns the shredder motor on only when (1)

the presence sensor indicates paper is present in the 

shredder’s feed and (2) the thickness sensor detects that 

the paper in the feed does not exceed the shredder’s 

thickness capacity. Fellowes notes that this set of claim 

elements results in a shredder that exhibits the desirable 

behavior of starting only when a user feeds an appropriate amount of paper into the shredder and not turning the 

motor on when the user has exceeded the shredder’s 

capacity. Independent claim 11 is representative for our 

purposes:

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ACCO BRANDS CORPORATION v. FELLOWES, INC. 3

A shredding machine for shredding sheet material, the machine comprising:

a feed-aperture;

an electric cutting mechanism, the feedaperture being configured to receive multiple sheets and direct said sheets in a 

feeding direction towards the cutting 

mechanism for shredding;

a controller coupled to the cutting mechanism;

a thickness detector coupled to the controller, the thickness detector having a part 

extending into the feed-aperture and being 

moveable such that said part will be engaged by sheet material inserted in the 

feeding direction into the feed-aperture 

prior to reaching the cutting mechanism, 

and moved from a first position to a second position as a result of said engagement, if the sheet material exceeds a 

predetermined thickness;

said controller being configured to, during 

insertion of the sheet material into the 

feed-aperture, permit energization of the 

cutting mechanism prior to the part of the 

thickness detector reaching the second position and prevent energization of the cutting mechanism responsive to said part of 

the thickness detector reaching the second 

position; and

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4 ACCO BRANDS CORPORATION v. FELLOWES, INC. 

a maximum thickness indicator for providing a visual or audible indication1 to a user of the machine that energization of the 

cutting mechanism is prevented due to the 

sheet material moving said part of the 

thickness detector to said second position;

further comprising a presence sensor 

along the feed-aperture for detecting a 

presence of the sheet material inserted into the feed-aperture, the controller being 

coupled to the presence sensor and the 

maximum thickness indicator,

wherein the controller is configured to 

start energization of the cutting mechanism only in response to the presence sensor detecting the presence of the sheet 

material inserted into the feed-aperture 

and the part of the thickness detector not 

having been moved to the second position 

by the sheet material;

wherein the controller is configured to 

prevent the starting of energization of the 

cutting mechanism and also actuate the 

maximum thickness indicator to provide 

the visual or audible indication in response to the part of the thickness detector moving to the second position.

’468 patent, claim 11.

 

1 Fellowes does not contend before us that its 

claimed “maximum thickness indicator for providing a 

visual or audible indication” provides an independent 

basis of nonobviousness. We thus do not consider this 

limitation.

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ACCO BRANDS CORPORATION v. FELLOWES, INC. 5

Both types of sensors as well as a controller that turns 

the shredder motor on and off were known in the shredder 

art. One prior-art reference, Japanese Patent No. 57-

70445 (JP ’445),2, 3 discloses a shredder with a thickness 

sensor. It explains that the shredder cuts power to the 

motor when the thickness sensor detects that the user has 

fed too much paper into the shredder. It also describes 

the prior-art solution to jamming upon which its invention attempts to improve. Prior-art shredders, it explains, 

contained jam-detection circuitry that monitors the current to the shredder motor for a spike that would indicate 

a jam has occurred. Upon detecting a jam, a shredder 

with this circuitry cuts power to the motor, preventing 

damage to the shredder’s mechanical components. JP 

’445 explains that this prior-art jam-detection circuitry 

suffers from a significant weakness: it does not shut down 

the shredder’s motor until the paper jam has already 

occurred. J.A. 1047. JP ’445’s system offered the distinct 

advantage of avoiding paper jams by placing a thickness 

sensor in the shredder’s feed. Whenever the thickness 

sensor detects the user has inserted too much paper into 

the feed, JP ’445’s thickness sensor transmits a signal to 

disconnect the motor’s power. JP ’445 does not disclose a 

presence sensor, or, for that matter, any other way to turn 

on the shredder motor. 

 

2 The record before us contains an English translation of this patent, whose accuracy no party challenges.

See J.A. 1047–49. We rely on this English translation for 

JP ’445’s contents.

3 The applicant cited JP ’445 to the examiner during the original prosecution of the application leading to 

the ’468 patent.

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6 ACCO BRANDS CORPORATION v. FELLOWES, INC. 

A variety of references4 show prior-art shredders with

presence sensors that turn the shredder motor on when a 

user feeds paper into the shredder. J.A. 1094–168. 

Two of the references showing presence sensors also 

disclose controllers to turn the motor on and off. J.A. 

1102, 1113, 1118, 1125, 1152, 1159–60. These controllers 

are connected to the presence sensor, and upon receiving 

a signal from the presence sensor that paper is present, 

they allow power to flow to the motor. These two references also disclose jam-detection circuitry similar to that 

described in JP ’445. J.A. 1097, 1100, 1101, 1153, 1160. 

Upon receiving a signal from the jam-detection circuitry 

indicating that a jam has occurred, the prior-art controllers cut power to the motor.

Because the prior art contains both sensors in Fellowes’ claims and a controller, Fellowes bases its position 

that it invented something nonobvious on its particular 

combination of these prior-art elements. 

The day that the ’468 Patent issued, Fellowes sued 

ACCO for infringement. ACCO then requested—and the 

Patent and Trademark Office granted—an inter partes

reexamination of the patent. The district court stayed 

Fellowes’ infringement suit pending the outcome of this 

reexamination. 

On reexamination, the examiner found a prima facie

case that independent claims 9 and 11 would have been 

an obvious combination of the prior art thickness and 

presence sensors and the prior art controller in a paper 

shredder. He similarly found that claims 10 and 12, 

 

4 The references in our record including presence 

sensors are GBC SHREDMASTER Models 2230S, 2250X 

Paper Shredders Service Manual (1997); U.S. Patent No. 

6,550,701; U.S. Patent No. 5,775,605; U.S. Patent No. 

4,842,205; and U.S. Patent No. 3,724,766.

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ACCO BRANDS CORPORATION v. FELLOWES, INC. 7

which depend on claims 9 and 11, respectively, would 

have been prima facie obvious based on these references 

and an additional reference. Fellowes presented rebuttal 

evidence, alleging a long-felt but unmet need. After 

considering the rebuttal evidence, the examiner maintained the § 103 rejection of claims 9–12.

Fellowes appealed to the Board. The Board agreed 

with the examiner’s findings that the prior art contained 

the claimed presence sensor, the claimed thickness sensor, and a controller to turn the motor on and off. See

ACCO Brands Corp. v. Fellowes, Inc., No. 2013-010043, 

2014 WL 492182, at *5, *7–11 (PTAB Feb. 6, 2014) (Board 

Opinion). It focused, however, on the claims’ requirement

that the controller be configured to start the motor only 

when the presence sensor detects paper is present and the 

thickness sensor detects the paper stack is not too thick. 

Id. The patent owner sees this requirement as central to 

the patent’s inventive concept: the claimed shredder 

improved upon the prior art, in the patent owner’s view, 

because it would start the shredder only when all conditions for successful shredding were satisfied rather than 

starting the shredder and then stopping after detecting a 

jam. The Board determined that, even if an ordinary 

artisan might have found it obvious to combine the two 

prior-art sensors and the prior-art controller, he would 

not have found it obvious to configure this controller as 

claimed. Id. at *14. It therefore found the examiner not 

to have made out a prima facie case that independent 

claims 9 and 11 would have been obvious. Id. at *14. 

Based on this finding, it concluded that all four claims at 

issue would have been nonobvious and that it did not 

need to consider Fellowes’ rebuttal evidence or the examiner’s additional evidence that dependent claims 10 and 

12 would have been obvious. Id.

After the Board denied ACCO’s request for rehearing, 

ACCO appealed to us.

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8 ACCO BRANDS CORPORATION v. FELLOWES, INC. 

ANALYSIS

We have jurisdiction over final determinations of the 

Board under 35 U.S.C. § 141(b) and 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1295(a)(4)(A). We review the Board’s legal conclusions 

de novo and its factual findings under a substantialevidence standard. Q.I. Press Controls, B.V. v. Lee, 752 

F.3d 1371, 1378–79 (Fed. Cir. 2014). 

A claim is unpatentable “if the differences between 

the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the 

claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious at 

the time the invention was made to a person having 

ordinary skill in the art . . .” 35 U.S.C. § 103 (2006);5 see 

also KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 406 

(2007). During patent examination and reexamination, 

the concept of prima facie obviousness establishes the 

framework for the obviousness determination and the 

burdens the parties face. See Kennametal, Inc. v. Ingersoll Cutting Tool Co., 780 F.3d 1376, 1384 (Fed. Cir. 

2015). Under this framework, the patent examiner must

first set forth a prima facie case, supported by evidence, 

showing why the claims at issue would have been obvious 

in light of the prior art. In re Sullivan, 498 F.3d 1345, 

1351 (Fed. Cir. 2007). Once the examiner sets out this 

prima facie case, the burden shifts to the patentee to 

provide evidence, in the prior art or beyond it, or argument sufficient to rebut the examiner’s evidence. Id. The 

examiner then reaches the final determination on obviousness by weighing the evidence establishing the prima 

 

5 Congress amended § 103 in the 2011 America Invents Act to account for the act’s first-inventor-to-file 

scheme. Given the effective filing date of the patent’s 

claims, we apply the version of § 103 preceding the America Invents Act’s changes. See Leahy-Smith America

Invents Act, Pub. L. No. 112–29, § 3(n)(1), 125 Stat. 284, 

293 (2011). 

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facie case with the rebuttal evidence. See Leo Pharm. 

Prods. v. Rea, 726 F.3d 1346, 1357 (Fed. Cir. 2013) 

(“[C]onsideration of the objective indicia is part of the 

whole obviousness analysis, not just an after-thought.”)

(emphasis omitted). If this weighing shows obviousness 

by a preponderance of the evidence, then the claims at 

issue were unpatentable. Rambus Inc. v. Rea, 731 F.3d 

1248, 1255 (Fed. Cir. 2013).

As Fellowes concedes before us, the Board correctly 

found that prior-art shredders contained the claimed 

presence sensor, the claimed thickness sensor, and a 

controller to turn the motor on and off. See Board Opinion at *5–11. 

It is unclear from the Board opinion whether the 

Board would find that it would have been obvious to 

combine the prior-art presence and thickness sensors and 

the prior-art controller in a single shredder. Regardless, 

such a combination would have been obvious for two 

independent reasons.

First, an ordinary artisan would have found motivation to modify the shredder with the thickness sensor 

disclosed in JP ’445 to add a presence sensor and controller. JP ’445 does not explicitly disclose any way to turn on 

the shredder motor, explaining only that its invention 

involves cutting power to the motor when the thickness 

sensor detects that too much paper has been fed into the 

shredder. An ordinary artisan would understand that in 

order for this shredder to function, the user must have 

some way to turn the shredder motor on in the first place. 

The prior art discloses presence sensors and controllers as 

a common way to turn a shredder motor on. The ordinary 

artisan would therefore find motivation to modify the 

invention JP ’445 discloses to include this well-known 

means to turn the shredder motor on. See KSR Int’l Co., 

550 U.S. at 416 (“The combination of familiar elements 

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10 ACCO BRANDS CORPORATION v. FELLOWES, INC. 

according to known methods is likely to be obvious when 

it does no more than yield predictable results.”).

Second—and alternatively—an ordinary artisan 

would have been motivated to modify a prior-art shredder 

containing a presence sensor and controller to add a 

thickness sensor. The Board correctly found that “the 

problem of shredder jamming was known as of the filing 

date of the ’445 patent.” Board Opinion at *4. The inclusion of jam-detection circuitry—an imperfect attempt to 

solve this same problem—in other prior art shredders 

further supports this conclusion that the problem was 

known in the art. This problem would have motivated an 

ordinary artisan to add a thickness sensor, a solution 

known in the art, to a shredder, including known shredders, containing a presence sensor and controller. See 

KSR Int’l Co., 550 U.S. at 419–20 (“One of the ways in 

which a patent’s subject matter can be proved obvious 

is by noting that there existed at the time of invention a 

known problem for which there was an obvious solution 

encompassed by the patent’s claims.”).

Under either of these scenarios, a skilled artisan

would have been motivated to connect the prior-art presence sensor and thickness sensor to the prior-art controller as inputs it would use to determine whether to turn on 

the shredder motor. Prior-art shredders connected this 

controller to the presence sensor and to the jam-detection 

circuitry. In the obvious combinations discussed above, 

the thickness sensor replaces the jam-detection circuitry 

as the means to prevent shredder jamming. The examiner thus properly found that it would have been prima 

facie obvious to replace the controller input from the jamdetection circuitry with an input from the thickness 

sensor.

Rather than finding that it would have been nonobvious to combine the prior-art sensors and controller, the 

Board found that an ordinary artisan would not have 

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ACCO BRANDS CORPORATION v. FELLOWES, INC. 11

found it obvious to configure the controller as claimed: to 

turn the motor on only when the presence sensor detects 

paper is present and the thickness sensor detects that the 

paper stack is not too thick. Board Opinion at *14. 

Substantial evidence does not support this finding; to the 

contrary, the evidence compels the opposite conclusion.

The prior art consistently locates the two sensors at 

issue in the shredder’s feed, and no party disputes that an 

ordinary artisan would have found this the obvious location for the combination of sensors. The ordinary artisan

would then be left with two design choices: he could place 

the thickness sensor either above the presence sensor in 

the feed, so that the paper contacts the thickness sensor

before the presence sensor, or below so that the paper 

contacts it after. Each of these two design choices is an 

obvious combination of prior-art elements. See KSR Int’l 

Co., 550 U.S. at 421 (“When there is a design need or 

market pressure to solve a problem and there are a finite 

number of identified, predictable solutions, a person of 

ordinary skill has good reason to pursue the known options within his or her technical grasp. If this leads to the 

anticipated success, it is likely the product not of innovation but of ordinary skill and common sense.”). The first

choice, with the thickness sensor above the presence

sensor in the feed, necessarily satisfies the claim limitations. In this configuration, the paper would first contact 

the thickness sensor, and the controller would prevent 

power from flowing to the motor if the user has inserted 

too much paper. Then, the paper would contact the 

presence sensor, and, assuming the thickness sensor did 

not indicate that the paper was too thick, the controller 

would turn the motor on. The motor would therefore turn 

on only when the thickness sensor detects that the paper 

is not too thick and the presence sensor detects that the 

paper is present, and it will be off in all other circumstances. Fellowes’ counsel acknowledged at oral argument that this particular configuration meets the 

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12 ACCO BRANDS CORPORATION v. FELLOWES, INC. 

limitations of its independent claims. Oral Argument at

22:48–23:50, ACCO Brands Corp. v. Fellowes, Inc., No. 

2015-1045 (Fed. Cir., Sept. 8, 2015, available at 

http://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/default.aspx?fl=20

15-1045.mp3). Fellowes correctly notes that the other 

configuration of the two sensors—where the presence 

sensor is above the thickness sensor—would result in 

slightly different shredder behavior. Were a user to feed 

too much paper into that shredder, the controller would 

briefly turn the motor on as the paper passes by the 

presence sensor and then turn it off as the too-thick paper

stack passes by the thickness sensor.6 Fellowes asserts 

that this behavior falls outside of the claims’ scope. But

even if one possible obvious combination falls outside of 

the claims, it fails to undercut the fact that the other 

possible obvious combination lies within their scope. The 

examiner therefore successfully set out a prima facie case 

that claims 9 and 11 would have been obvious.7

CONCLUSION

We reverse the Board’s determination that the examiner did not set forth a prima facie case of obviousness. 

Based on the Board’s finding of no prima facie case as to 

claims 9 and 11, it appropriately declined to reach (1) the 

examiner’s prima facie evidence that claims 10 and 12 are 

obvious and (2) Fellowes’ rebuttal evidence. We decline to 

take either category of evidence up for the first time on 

appeal and instead remand this case to the Board so that

it may consider these two issues. 

 

6 One might conceivably modify the prior-art controller to eliminate this behavior, but there was no evidence in the record about the obviousness of such a 

modification.

7 Fellowes makes no additional arguments against 

the examiner’s prima facie case beyond those on which 

the Board relied.

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REVERSED AND REMANDED 

No costs.

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