NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

MATTHEWS INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION,

Appellant

v.

VANDOR CORPORATION,

Appellee

______________________ 

2017-1889

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. IPR2016-

00112.

______________________ 

Decided: March 27, 2018

______________________ 

 ROBERT WILLIAM MORRIS, Eckert Seamans Cherin & 

Mellott, LLC, White Plains, NY, argued for appellant. 

Also represented by OJEIKU CHRISTOPHER AISIKU; KEVIN 

P. ALLEN, Pittsburgh, PA.

 HAROLD C. MOORE, Maginot, Moore & Beck LLP, 

Indianapolis, IN, argued for appellee. Also represented 

by DANIEL J. GREENHALGH, MICHAEL A. SWIFT. 

______________________ 
2 MATTHEWS INTERNATIONAL CORP. v. VANDOR CORPORATION

Before DYK, CHEN, and STOLL, Circuit Judges.

CHEN, Circuit Judge. 

Matthews International Corporation (Matthews) appeals the final written decision of the Patent Trial and 

Appeal Board (Board) in IPR2016-00112. In that proceeding, the Board determined that Matthews, the petitioner, 

had failed to demonstrate by a preponderance of the 

evidence that claims 1–14 of U.S. Patent No. 8,104,151 

(the ’151 Patent) were unpatentable. We have jurisdiction over this appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A). 

Although the Board applied an overly broad understanding of the claim term “casket,” substantial evidence supports the Board’s finding that Matthews failed to show 

how the prior art teaches that limitation. For that reason, we affirm.

DISCUSSION

The ’151 Patent claims are directed to “a casket arrangement” made of pliable material, such as cardboard, 

for example. The side and end panels of the casket can be 

folded in such a way to allow the casket to be reconfigured in a more flattened, compact arrangement, for 

ease of shipping and storage. As proof that such dual 

configuration containers as recited in claim 1 already 

existed at the time of the invention, Matthews relied on

U.S. Patent No. 5,050,766 (Groh), which discloses a 

collapsible cardboard ice chest, and U.S. Patent No. 

3,346,399 (Watson), which discloses a collapsible cardboard frozen dough package. 

However, claim 1 also recites the limitation “wherein 

the bottom panel, the side panels and the end panels form 

a casket body.” Rather than argue that it would have 

been obvious to modify existing cardboard cremation 

caskets to include the known folding properties disclosed 

in Groh or Watson, Matthews argued before the Board 

that the “casket body” limitation was merely “an intended 
MATTHEWS INTERNATIONAL CORP. v. VANDOR CORPORATION 3

use” and should receive no patentable weight. J.A. 58. 

The Board disagreed, concluding that the structural term 

“casket body” was entitled to patentable weight. J.A. 22–

23. The Board noted that the ’151 Patent specification 

describes “casket body 11” as “form[ing] a container for 

receiving the remains of the deceased.” ’151 Patent col. 3 

ll. 42–43. The Board thus construed “casket body” as “an 

arrangement capable of receiving or containing the remains of a deceased.” J.A. 27. In its institution decision, 

the Board limited the term “deceased” to “deceased humans,” but in its final written decision, the Board credited 

the Petitioner’s submitted evidence of pet caskets, and 

thus broadened the term “deceased” to include animals. 

Despite using that broader construction, the Board found 

that Matthews never provided any evidence or reasoning 

for why either Groh or Watson’s container satisfied the 

casket body limitation. 

On appeal, Matthews reiterates its argument that 

“casket body” is purely an intended use and thus should 

be accorded no patentable weight. We disagree. “Casket 

body” is a structural term in the body of the claim that 

further defines and limits the scope of the claimed invention. That structural terms are sometimes defined—

through claim construction—by the functions they are 

designed to perform does not somehow convert those 

structural terms into “an intended use” stripped of any 

patentable weight. Based on the disclosure of the ’151 

Patent that the casket body “forms a container for receiving the remains of the deceased,” we agree with the Board 

that “an arrangement capable of receiving or containing 

the remains of a deceased”1 is the broadest reasonable 

interpretation of “casket body.”

1 We note that neither party, whether before the 

Board or this court, raised the issue of how the words “the 

remains of” should be understood, i.e., whether remains 

 
4 MATTHEWS INTERNATIONAL CORP. v. VANDOR CORPORATION

However, we do not agree with the Board that the 

term “deceased” includes animals or other non-human 

bodies. The ’151 Patent specification repeatedly uses the 

noun “deceased” to refer to the contents of the casket. See

’151 Patent col. 1 ll. 43, 47, 55; col. 3 ll. 43, 50, 52, 60; col. 

5 ll. 10–12; col. 6 l. 25. As Vandor Corporation, the patent 

owner, correctly pointed out to the Board, “deceased,” in 

its noun form, universally refers to a human. J.A. 667 & 

n. 2; see, e.g., Deceased, MERRIAM-WEBSTER, merriamwebster.com/dictionary/deceased (defining the noun form 

of “deceased” as “a dead person”). Nothing in the written 

description or figures suggests a broader understanding of 

its usage of “deceased.” Indeed, they all contemplate a 

casket configured for a dead person. See ’151 Patent col. 5 

ll. 10–12 (referring to the “head” and “feet” “of the deceased”), figs. 3, 9. Although the Board relied on prior art 

pet caskets to broaden the meaning of “deceased,” those 

references do not show that the term “deceased,” standing 

alone, means anything other than a dead human; nor do 

these specialty “pet caskets” undermine the understanding of “casket” in the ’151 Patent. See U.S. Patent Nos. 

3,997,948; D253,975; D292,839. The Board in an IPR 

typically uses the “broadest reasonable construction” of 

the claim, see Cuozzo Speed Techs., LLC v. Lee, 136 S. Ct. 

2131, 2142 (2016), but given the plain meaning of “deceased” and the context of the ’151 Patent specification, 

the Board’s construction of deceased was unreasonably 

broad. We thus construe “deceased” in the ’151 Patent, as 

the Board did in its institution decision, as “a dead human.”

As the party bearing the burden of proof, Matthews 

had to present a case for why Groh’s ice chest or Watson’s

frozen dough container disclosed “an arrangement capable 

could include cremated remains in addition to corporeal 

remains. That issue is thus not before us.

 
MATTHEWS INTERNATIONAL CORP. v. VANDOR CORPORATION 5

of receiving or containing the remains of a deceased.” 

Matthews’s petition for inter partes review contained no

discussion about whether the prior art structures were 

capable of containing a deceased; it instead argued that 

“casket body” carried no patentable weight. And in its 

petitioner’s reply, Matthews made only the single statement, without anything more, that “it is clear that human 

infants can fit into an ‘ice chest’ sized container.” J.A. 

381. The Board found that this “unsupported argument is 

not persuasive.” J.A. 31. We agree, given that this sentence in Matthews’s reply does not even attempt to refer 

to anything in the Groh or Watson disclosures, let alone 

present their teachings in a meaningful way to meet the 

casket body limitation. The claims at issue here may well 

be unpatentable as obvious in light of prior art disclosing 

cardboard caskets and disclosing the folding of cardboard 

boxes in the manner described by the patent. But in an 

inter partes review proceeding, the petitioner bears the 

burden of proving that issued patent claims are unpatentable by a preponderance of the evidence. See 35 

U.S.C. § 316(e). With respect to claim 1, Matthews only 

argued anticipation. We agree with the Board that Matthews’s single conclusory sentence to address the issue of 

whether a deceased could be contained in the prior art 

structures failed to meet that burden of proof.

CONCLUSION

We have considered all of Matthews’s other arguments and find them unpersuasive. For the foregoing 

reasons, we affirm the Board’s claim construction of 

“casket body,” except to the extent to which the Board 

construed “deceased” in its construction to include bodies 

other than human. We affirm the Board’s determination 

that Matthews failed to prove by a preponderance of the 

evidence that the challenged claims of the ’151 Patent are 

unpatentable. 

AFFIRMED