Source: http://patents.hdp.com/?m=201708
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 17:12:37+00:00

Document:
In Nantkwest, Inc. v. Matal, [2016-1794](August 31, 2017) the Federal Circuit sua sponte granted rehearing en banc of the panel decision discussed here on the issue of whether 35 U.S.C. § 145’s “[a]ll the expenses of the proceedings” provision authorizes an award of the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s attorneys’ fees?
Not part of this review is its most unfair aspect — that a successful applicant still must pay the USPTO’s “expenses” (whatever that means).
In Vicor Corp. v. Synqor, Inc., [2016-2283] (August 30, 2017) the Federal Circuit affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded the Board’s decisions in two reexaminations, one in which the Board found that certain claims of U.S. Patent No. 8,023,290 are patentable; and one in which the Board found certain claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,272,021 unpatentable as anticipated or obvious.
Board improperly analyzed the obviousness arguments under only one of the four Graham factors when it looked exclusively at the objective evidence, without considering the remaining factors and the relative strength of the factors. The Federal Circuit further said that the Board reached inconsistent conclusions as to the evidentiary weight to be given to the secondary considerations evidence presented in the respective reexaminations of the ’290 and ’021 patents, without any explanation to justify such inconsistency.
claims that were found to be anticipated in other cases and, therefore, found that there was no nexus between the objective evidence and the claims of the ’021 patent. The Federal Circuit concluded that Board’s decisions do not evince any explanation or justification for these inconsistent findings, given the similarity between the claims at issue in the respective reexaminations.
In Ultratec, Inc. v. Captioncall, LLC., [2016-1706, 2016-1707, 2016-1708, 2016-1709, 2016-1710, 2016-1712, 2016-1713, 2016-1715, 2016-2366] (August 28, 2017), the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded Board decisions invalidating Ultratec’s patents relating to systems for assisting deaf or hard-of-hearing users to make phone calls, in a group of IPRs, finding that the Board failed to consider material evidence and failed to explain its decisions to exclude the evidence.
Caption call submitted the testimony of an expert, Benedict Occhiogrosso, in the IPR’s. Ultratec attempted to introduce conflicting trial testimony Occhiogrosso. Ultratec moved to supplement the record with the conflicting Occhiogrosso trial testimony, but because Ultratec did not first request authorization to file the motion, the Board expunged the motion from the record.
Within a week of the jury trial in which Occhiogrosso testified, Ultratec requested authorization to file a motion to submit portions of Mr. Occhiogrosso’s trial testimony to the Board. Ultratec alleged that Mr. Occhiogrosso’s trial testimony addressing a prior art reference was inconsistent with his IPR declarations. The Board held a conference call to consider Ultratec’s request for authorization to file a motion to supplement the IPR record with Mr. Occhiogrosso’s trial testimony, but did not review the testimony when deciding whether it could be admitted. The Board denied the request, promising a written order that was never provided.
After refusing to admit Occhiogrosso’s trial testimony, the oard issued final written decisions, holding that every challenged claim was either anticipated or would have been obvious, relying heavily on the Board’s belief that Occhiogrosso was a credible witness, citing his declaration more than thirty times, at least once as to each of the eight patents.
Good cause and interests-of-justice are closely related standards, but the interests-of-justice standard is slightly higher than good cause. While a good cause standard requires a party to show a specific factual reason to justify the needed discovery, under the interests-of-justice standard, the Board would look at all relevant factors. Specifically, to show good cause, a party would be required to make a particular and specific demonstration of fact. Under the interests-of-justice standard, the moving party would also be required to show that it was fully diligent in seeking discovery and that there is no undue prejudice to the non-moving party.
admit Mr. Occhiogrosso’s trial testimony. First, the evidence could not have been obtained earlier. Ultratec emailed the Board requesting authorization to file a motion to supplement the record the week after the jury trial concluded. This is not evidence that could have been located earlier through a more diligent or exhaustive search; it did not exist during the IPR discovery period.
The Federal Circuit said that the fact that Ultratec could have, but did not, depose and obtain inconsistent testimony from Mr. Occhiogrosso during the IPR itself is not a basis for concluding otherwise. Ultratec argues that during cross examination at trial in front of the jury Mr. Occhiogrosso offered testimony that is inconsistent with his IPR testimony. That inconsistent testimony did not exist sooner and thus could not have been proffered to the Board sooner.
The Federal Circuit noted that conflicting testimony by Mr. Occhiogrosso would be highly relevant to both the Board’s analysis of the specific issues on which he gave inconsistent testimony and to the Board’s overall view of his credibility. His testimony was critical to the Board’s fact findings, and under such circumstances, no reasonable fact finder would refuse to consider evidence of inconsistent sworn testimony. The Federal Circuit further noted that admitting and reviewing Mr. Occhiogrosso’s trial testimony would have placed minimal additional burden on the Board.
A number of problems with the Board’s procedures contributed to its errors in this case. First, the Board lacked the information necessary to make a reasoned decision. Second, the Board’s procedures allowed it to make significant evidentiary decisions without providing an explanation or a reasoned basis for its decisions. Third, the Board’s procedures impede meaningful appellate review of the agency decision-making.
The Federal Circuit concluded that the Board abused its discretion when it refused to admit and consider Mr. Occhiogrosso’s trial testimony and when it refused to explain its decision.
In Return Mail, Inc. v. United States Postal Service, [2016-1502] (August 28, 2017), the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s decision that the US Postal Service had standing to challenge Return Mails patents in an CBMR, and that as a result of that challenge the patents were not patentable subject matter under 35 USC §101.
The Federal Circuit held that it had authority to review the standing issue, concluding that Cuozzo and Achates are distinguishable and do not dictate the availability of judicial review in this case. The Federal Circuit distinguished Cuozzo, finding that whether a party is statutorily allowed to petition for CBM review does not amount to “little more than a challenge to the [PTO’s] conclusion” about the petition’s likelihood of success on the merits. The Federal Circuit distinguished Achates based on differences in the statutory framework for IPR and CBM review, CBM review being reserved only to parties who have have been sued for or charged with infringement of the underlying patent. The Federal Circuit further noted that unlike the IPR time bar at issue in Achates, which is simply a procedural requirement that rights be exercised in a timely manner, § 18(a)(1)(B) relates to a party’s right to seek CBM review in the first instance. The Federal Circuit held that § 324(e) does not bar judicial review of the Board’s decision that a party satisfies § 18(a)(1)(B)’s requirements to petition for CBM review.
were insufficient to compel a conclusion that Congress intended to exclude a government-related party sued under § 1498(a) from being able to petition for CBM review.
address data” but are not directed to such an abstract idea. Return Mail first argued that the claims do not preempt other systems for relaying mailing address data; and second, that the claims are directed to a specific improvement to technology for relaying mailing address data. The Federal Circuit disagreed, finding that the claims were directed to an abstract idea, much like the claims in Content Extraction and FairWarning. The Federal Circuit further found the argument that the claims were directed to a specific improvement was also unavailing, noting that limiting the abstract idea to a particular environment such as a mail processing system with generic computing technology, “does not make the claims any less abstract for the Alice Step 1 analysis.
claims at issue were not analogous to claims “directed to a specific implementation of a solution to a problem in the software arts,” which it has held not to be directed to an abstract idea. The Federal Circuit found that the claims only recite routine, conventional activities such as identifying undeliverable mail items, decoding data on those mail items, and creating output data.
technological work would thwart the primary object of the patent laws to promote future innovation, concluding that “[p]reemption is therefore part and parcel with the §101 inquiry.” The Federal Circuit noted that while it has often cited the lack of preemption concerns to support a determination that a claim is patent-eligible under § 101, it has consistently held that claims that are otherwise directed to patent-ineligible subject matter cannot be saved by arguing the absence of complete preemption.
The Board began with an explanation of the rationale for the Office’s application of the Broadest Reasonable Interpretation to claims pending before the Office, one consequence of which is a lower threshhold for ambiguity than in the courts. The Board explained that it did not understand that the Supreme Court’s Nautilus decision required any change in the Office’s approach to indefiniteness. Thus the Board applied the approach for assessing indefiniteness approved by the Federal Circuit in Packard, i.e., “[a] claim is indefinite when it contains words or phrases whose meaning is unclear.” The Board acknowledged that this requirement is not a demand for unreasonable precision, and does not contemplate in every case a verbal precision of the kind found in mathematics, and invokes some standard of reasonable precision in the use of language in the context of the circumstances.
The Board then turned to the “configured” limitation of the claim, noting that it is unusual because, rather than further defining the water detector’s structure, including by reference to a function that the water detector is capable of performing, the claim language attempts to further define the water detector’s structure by the skill level required to install the water detector. The Board found that this language “fails to provide adequate clarity to the required structure because the skill level of ‘an untrained installer or a homeowner’ is ambiguous and vague, and thus, the meaning of a structure configured to be “reliably installed” by such an installer is unclear.
The Board went on to point out that even if the applicant’s definition was correct the “configured” limitation, when read in light of the Specification, fails to further clearly define the structure encompassed by the limitation. In other words, the Board said, neither the claim language or specification delineates how a person of ordinary skill would determine whether a water detector that includes each of the structural limitations of claim 1 further satisfies the “configured” limitation.
For these reasons, the Board agreed with the Examiner that the claimed “configured” limitation, under the broadest reasonable interpretation when read in light of the Specification, is vague and unclear, and a person having ordinary skill in the art would not be able to discern the metes and bounds of the claimed invention in light of this claim language.
In In re Stepan Co., [2016-1811] (August 25, 2017), the Federal Circuit vacated the PTAB’s affirmance of the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–31 of U.S. Patent Application No. 12/456,567 on herbicidal formulations containing glyphosate salt with a surfactant system.
The Examiner found that the prior art contained the preferred surfactants, and further taught glycols as an optional ingredient, and concluded that “it is routine optimization to select and adjust the surfactants to the undisclosed range. The Board affirmed.
The Federal Circuit also noted the absence of a reasonable expectation of success. The Federal Circuit said that to have a reasonable expectation of success, one must be motivated to do more than merely to vary all parameters or try each of numerous possible choices until one possibly arrived at a successful result.
The Board’s decision was vacated, and the application remanded for further examination.
In NIDEC Motor Corp. v. Zhongshan Broad Ocean Motor Co. Ltd., [2016-2321] (August 22, 2017), the Federal Circuit affirmed the Board’s determination that claims 1–3, 8, 9, 12, 16, and 19 of U.S. Patent No. 7,626,349 are invalid as anticipated or obvious.
by Hideji, because Broad Ocean had failed to provide an affidavit attesting to the accuracy of the submitted translation of Hideji as required by 37 C.F.R. § 42.63(b).
Broad Ocean filed a second petition again asserting that the challenged claims are anticipated by Hideji, including the required affidavit, and requesting that the Board join the Second Petition with Broad Ocean’s already-instituted IPR involving the First Petition. The Board again declined to institute review, this time on the grounds that the Petition was time-barred.
concluded that § 315(c) permits the joinder with the original IPR.
On appeal the parties agreed that, if the Federal Circuit affirmed as to obviousness, it need not address Nidec’s challenges to the procedural aspects of the Board’s joinder decision and its holding concerning anticipation by Hideji. Because the Federal Circuit affirmed as to invalidity for obviousness, it did not have to reach the Board’s joinder decision.
by adding time-barred issues to an otherwise timely proceeding.
where the PTO is dissatisfied with a panel’s earlier decision is the appropriate mechanism of achieving the desired uniformity.
It is difficult to image a practice more offensive to fair adjudication then adding judges to a panel to achieve a desired outcome. It is outrageous to make parties participate in an adjudication where the outcome is predetermined by court packing.
In In re Walter, [2016-2256] (August 21, 2017), the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s decision in ex parte reexamination of U.S. Patent No. 7,513,711 that all twelve claims of the patent lack adequate written description and are indefinite under 35 U.S.C. § 112.
While the opinion is non-precedential, it still has a simple, but valuable lesson for applicants and patent owners. During the reexamination Walter amended the claims (directed to artificial reefs for cultivating marine life) to require a “support structure” that was “block-like.” The Examiner found this use of “block-like indefinite because Walter’s proposed construction conflicted with the dictionary meaning of the term “block.” During the appeal to the PTAB and during the appeal to the Federal Circuit, Walter alternated between two different meanings of the claim term “block-like,” and therein is the lesson of the case. If the applicant/patent owner can’t decide what a claim term means, then it is hard for the Board or a court to conclude that the term is sufficiently definite.
No-one can say whether one of the possible constructions would have satisfied 35 USC §112, but presenting two possible constructions certainly does not.
In Georgetown Rail Equipment Company v. Holland L.P., [2016-2297] (August 1, 2017), the Federal Circuit affirmed judgment of infringement and the award of lost profits and enhanced damages for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 7,616,329 on a system and method for inspecting railroad tracks.
Holland challenged the district court’s conclusion that the claim language “mounted on a vehicle for movement along the railroad track” was not a claim limitation. The Federal Circuit noted that whether to treat a preamble as a limitation is a determination resolved only on review of the entire patent to gain an understanding of what the inventors actually invented and intended to encompass by the claim, add that there is no simple test for understanding the import of the preamble.
claims depend on a particular disputed preamble phrase for antecedent basis.
the preamble is essential to understand limitations or terms in the claim body.
the preamble recites additional structure or steps underscored as important by the specification.
there was clear reliance on the preamble during prosecution to distinguish the claimed invention from the prior art.
On the other hand a preamble is not a claim limitation if the claim body defines a structurally complete invention and uses the preamble only to state a purpose or intended use for the invention.
The Federal Circuit agreed with the district court that the preamble was not a limitation, noting In the context of the entire patent, it is apparent that the term “mounted on a vehicle for movement along the railroad track” is meant to describe the principal intended use of the invention but not to import a structural limitation or to exclude from the reach of the claims an assembly that does not include a vehicle mount.
Holland argued that it did not infringement the patent because some of the processing of the acquired data was performed by a third party. However, the Federal Circuit none-the-less found that Holland used the claim system despite the fact that third parties operated parts of the system.
jury could have found that Georgetown would have received business from Union Pacific for data collection services if Holland’s infringing product was not in the market, supporting an award of lost profits.
Finally with respect to enhanced damages, the Federal Circuit found substantial evidence supports the jury’s finding that subjective recklessness led to willful infringement. While Holland disputed many of the facts, the Federal Circuit said that the jury was free to decide whose evidence it found more compelling on the question of willfulness and found in Georgetown’s favor.
While the Federal Circuit has long held that in many if not most cases, the preamble of a claim is a not limitation, the reason to ignore words that the inventor selected to describe the invention has never been clear. Given the strictness with which other words in the claim are construed, giving a fee pass for some words simply because they appear before the colon seems inconsistent.
with multiple different processors, was drawn to patent ineligible subject matter.
The Federal Circuit said that the framework for distinguishing patents that claim laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas from those that claim patent-eligible applications of those concepts comprises two steps. The first step requires courts to determine whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent-ineligible concepts. If they are, the court must then analyze whether the claim elements, either individually or as an ordered combination, contain an “inventive concept” that transforms the nature of the claim into a patent-eligible application.
database) and Thales (unique configuration of inertial sensors), the Federal Circuit found that the claims were directed to an improved computer memory system, not to the abstract idea of categorical data storage.
than a black box” by pointing out there was a microfiche appendix of computer code, that enablement was a §112 issue not a §101 issue, and finally by pointing out that the innovative effort was not in the programminer required, but in the creation of the memory system.
natural phenomena, or abstract ideas.” The Federal Circuit ended the inquiry at Step 1 and remanded the case.
In the end the finding of patentable subject matter was 2 judges for and 2 judges (the dissent and the district court judge) against. If only all patentability determinations were as certain as 50-50.

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