Source: https://patentlyo.com/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 18:18:30+00:00

Document:
Back in 2017 iRobot (maker of the Roomba) complained to the USITC about infringing autonomous vacuums being imported into the US. The patentee won on some grounds, but lost on others.
This appeal focuses on iRobot’s U.S. Patent 9,486,924 which allows for scheduling of the cleaning via mobile phone. After conducting its investigation, the ITC found no infringement. A divided appellate panel has affirmed.
The issue on appeal is claim-construction. The claims include a requirement that a phone user transmit certain “instructions” to the cleaning robot.
navigating about a floor surface of a room.
The question in the case is whether those “instructions” can simply be schedule information, or must they be machine executable code.
iRobot argues that its proposed construction could include, for example, a simple instruction to begin the cleaning cycle.
Judge Bryson’s approach here fits better with my reading of the patent document itself since there is no enablement or description in the patent itself of how the phone would be sending computer code to the iRobot. Still, I don’t have much sympathy to a patentee in this case who added new and not-defined limitations into a continuation application.
At its core, the dispute between the majority and dissent is about the intelligence of the “cleaning robot.” If the device is an AI-enabled robot then Bryson’s opinion makes lots of sense because the device will be able to understand lots of commands. On the other hand, a lower-level electronic device may need more technical instructions in order to guide its progress.
Impact of the provisional: In this case, the patent at issue is a continuation from a prior utility application and also claims priority to a prior provisional application. Neither of the non-provisional applications talk through the process of sending machine-code from a phone to the Roomba. However, the provisional does go into depth on an approach to transfer new code and algorithms to the vacuum from a separate device or drive. Those elements of the invention were seemingly stripped-out of the non-provisional before it was filed. The opinion does not mention the provisional application, but the situation begs to be addressed. At first glance, the provisional provides a strong indication that the inventors contemplated the idea of transferring machine code instructions from a remote device to the vacuum — supporting the majority opinion. On the other hand, the fact that those disclosures were removed from the non-provisional application indicates that the ‘924 patent was moving in a different direction.
In Is There Any Need to Resort to a § 101 Exception for Prior Art Ideas, Mr. Doerre states that “[n]otably, however, there is no similar need to resort to use of an implicit exception to prevent undue preemption of known prior art abstract ideas, as 35 U.S.C. § 102 and 35 U.S.C. § 103 already ensure that claims do not disproportionately ‘“t[ie] up the use of  underlying” [prior art] ideas.’ This can be seen in that, under 35 U.S.C. § 103, a claim must be inventive over all known prior art ideas, and cannot simply be an obvious application of a prior art abstract idea, or an obvious combination of several prior art abstract ideas.” Of course, since Section 103 often requires detailed factual evaluations not readily resolved early in litigation, the pressure to use Section 101 remains even for ineligible subject matter that is in fact prior art against the applicant. And unlike for Section 103, the nature of the creative advance over that discovery may be readily apparent on the face of the patent’s disclosure (particularly where it lies in the discovery itself and thus there is no meaningful additional creativity to render the practical application non-obvious). But courts are unlikely to grant motions to dismiss under Section 103, and for some bizarre reason we keep giving this ultimate question of law to juries. Further, Section 103’s obviousness standard in fact is not much clearer than Section 101 standards.
But the important point is that Section 101 is needed for precisely the case Mr. Doerre avoids, when the ineligible discovery is not prior art against the applicant. Mr. Doerre would be absolutely correct that we do not need to use Section 101 if Section 103 could do the job (of excluding uncreative applications of ineligible discoveries in the three categories of excluded subject matter – which are judicial interpretations of the meaning of “invention or discovery” and are not “judicial exceptions” to Section 101 subject matter). But Section 103 cannot do that job as current written, even though both provisions derived from the same statutory section under the pre-1952 Act. And that is because such ineligible discoveries are not normally among the categories of Section 102 prior art as applied to an applicant who is also the discoverer of that ineligible subject matter.
As I have written before (see https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1757272 and the briefs for amici law professors that I filed in Bilski, Mayo, and Myriad), the ineligible subject matter is often discovered by the applicant himself or herself, and thus does not qualify as Section 102 prior art for Section 103 obviousness analysis. If it did, then 103 in fact would be able to do the job, although given the tremendous uncertainty over what qualifies as a non-obvious advance under Section 103 we would still have roughly the same amount of uncertainty in the law. Further, no person who objects to using Section 101 to exclude categorically ineligible discoveries claimed as practical applications thereof would be the happier if we were to amend Section 102 to permit Section 103 to do the job now being performed (and only capable of being performed) by Section 101. This is because then we would just use obviousness law to have to make the difficult decisions as to whether the claim as a whole represents a non-obvious advance over the ineligible discovery while treating the discovery as prior art against the applicant. And as just noted, we don’t have a clear theory of how much creativity constitutes a non-obvious advance. Although the amicus brief I filed for law and economics professors in KSR sought to have the Court explicitly adopt a time and money threshold of ordinary creativity so as to create that clear theory, predictably the Supreme Court declined the invitation to make the law clearer (while still correcting the errors of analysis of the Federal Circuit in assessing what constitutes an “obvious” advance over the prior art of record).
Further, as Professor Katherine Strandburg has persuasively explained (see https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2196844) and as the recent and less recent history clearly reflects, the current concern (since Benson) with preemption is not in fact either the source of the current eligibility doctrine nor the grounds for finding any practical applications to be ineligible. As I explained in both the cited paper and briefs noted above, non-preemption is a consequence of having an inventive application of ineligible subject matter; lack of preemption says nothing about whether the application is in fact inventive in light of the discovery of such ineligible subject matter. Consequently, were preemption of the entire set of applications of ineligible discoveries actually the concern driving application of the doctrine, none of the claims held invalid by the Supreme Court or the Federal Circuit should have been held invalid, as all those claimed specific applications did not preempt many other things that might have been claimed when employing the ineligible discoveries. (Of course, some of those held-to-be invalid claims may have covered all of the valuable, then-known applications. But the Supreme Court had held in the Telephone Cases that claiming all valuable applications was perfectly fine, so long as the claims reflected the actual “invention” – meaning, at the time, a creative advance over ineligible subject matter). Parker v. Flook’s terminology made this quite clear, requiring “some other inventive concept in its application” than mere (i.e., uncreative) application of the categorically ineligible discovery. Flook’s language (and approach) was explicitly reaffirmed by Mayo’s recitation of a requirement for an “inventive concept” (notwithstanding the failure of the Supreme Court to explicitly acknowledged that Diamond v. Diehr had impliedly overruled Flook on this point, and that Mayo has now impliedly overruled Diehr on this point by reinstating Flook. That Mayo also improvidently reiterated Benson’s preemption rationale without applying it in any way in the analysis is simply another example of uncareful opinions of the Supreme Court that engender further confusion rather than clarifying the law. As Professor Strandburg has suggested, we would do well to simply ignore the “preemption” language and focus on the real question, which Professor Jeffrey Lefstin has correctly described (see https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2398696) of whether we want a standard of inventive application or only of practical application. (Although I disagree with Professor Lefstin in regard to whether Funk Brothers was in fact the first instance of inventive application, we agree that the 1952 Act did not clearly overrule Funk Brothers. This is important so that people will not continue to argue that Giles Rich was correct in his later revisionist history (see https://books.google.com/books/about/Laying_the_Ghost_of_the_invention_Requir.html?id=xH1etwAACAAJ) that all questions of inventive creativity were placed in Section 103 by the 1952 Act, notwithstanding that P.J. Federico, who was the other principal co-author of the 1952 Act, argued the opposite – successfully – in the Application of Ducci case, 225 F.2d 683 (C.C.P.A. 1955) that Section 101’s “process” category (incorporating Section 100(b)’s definition of “process”) continued the “analogous use” test of inventive creativity requirement for claimed processes that the Supreme Court had articulated in Ansonia Brass & Copper Co. v. Electrical Supply Co., 144 U.S. 11 (1892)).
In summary, Mr. Doerre is simply wrong that Section 103 can do the job as currently written. But if it could, he would be no happier with the state of the law, so long as inventive application remained the law for what constitutes an eligible (or a patentable) “invention,” and all without regard to “preemption.” Should legislation move forward to eliminate the requirement for inventive application, we will have to learn if it in fact is a requirement of constitutional stature in granting authority to “inventors for their discoveries” (or is simply like the dicta in Graham v. John Deere, 386 U.S. 1, 6 (1966), that Congress may not remove inventions that have entered the public domain by granting patents on them – which the Supreme Court subsequently rejected in the copyright context as a constitutional limitation on legislative power in Golan v. Holder, 565 U.S. 302, 323-24 (2012) (quoting Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 202 n.7 (2003)). But first, Congress would have to enact such legislation, and there are good reasons not to eliminate the inventive application requirement wholly without regard to the politics of which industries’ oxen will be gored thereby. And let’s hope that if Congress does go there, that Congress is careful not to thereby permit aesthetic creativity to provide the “practical application” that thereby authorizes the grant of a utility patent as novel and nonobvious subject matter (whenever the aesthetic contribution to the claimed invention functionally interacts with the substrate that forms the remainder of the “claim as a whole,” so that the printed matter doctrine will not apply and thus the aesthetic creativity will thereby prevent a finding of non-obviousness, so we will end up with a design patent on steroids issued as a utility patent).
Disclosure statement: I have no current financial interest in the issues addressed.
In 2014, DuPont sued Unifrax for infringing its patented flame-barrier that is both lightweight and thin. U.S. Patent 8,607,926 (“Composite Flame Barrier Laminate for a Thermal and Acoustic Insulation Blanket”). The jury sided with DuPont — finding the asserted claims infringed and not proven invalid. Over a dissent from Judge O’Malley, the Federal Circuit has affirmed — finding that substantial evidence supports the verdict. (Majority authored by Judge Reyna and joined by Judge Hughes).
When 90% counts as 100%: A key issue on appeal was the meaning of the claim term “100%.” DuPont’s claims required an “inorganic refractory layer” made of “platelets in an amount of 100% by weight.” That particular limitation was added during prosecution to get around a prior art reference that taught a platelet concentration of less than 100%.
The accused product layer approximates 100% platelets, but has some small amount of residual dispersant that didn’t fully evaporate. Prior to trial, the district court sided with DuPont on claim construction and ruled that “100%” be interpreted as allowing for “some residual dispersant.” This substantially foreclosed Unifrax’s non-infringement argument that it had hoped to take to the jury.
The refractory layer comprises platelets. Preferably at least 85% of the layer comprises platelets, more preferably at least 90% and most preferably at least 95%. In some embodiments, platelets comprise 100% of the layer. The refractory layer may comprise some residual dispersant arising from incomplete drying of the platelet dispersion during manufacture.
There is no ambiguity in this language. The “platelets” must be present in the refractory layer “in an amount of 100% by weight.” The “100% by weight” language, coupled with the requirement that the platelets exist in an “inorganic refractory layer,” clearly contemplates that the platelets—i.e., inorganic material—constitute the entirety of the refractory layer. That leaves no room for other organic additives. There is perhaps no clearer or simpler way the patentee could have conveyed such a requirement.
The claim language is actually quite mess in the same clause it indicates that the refractory layer comprises “platelets in an amount of 100% by weight” but may also have a moisture content of up to 10% by weight. 110% by weight concentration is not ordinarily allowed in physics. However, we do sometimes talk about “110% effort” and Cecil Quillin has reported a USPTO’s patent grant rate as greater than 100% (by comparing original filings to all patents issued in the resulting family).
Product on sale before the patent filing. A unique aspect of this lawsuit is that the accused products were already on sale before DuPont filed its patent application.
Unifrax’s product was on-sale by May 2011; DuPont filed its application in December 2011. To be clear, DuPont’s patent does claim priority to prior applications, but only as a continuation-in-part. The prior applications apparently do not sufficiently disclose the invention at-issue here.
For DuPont, the fact that its patent was filed prior to the AIA saved its bacon. On appeal, the Federal Circuit agreed that DuPont had presented substantial evidence to antedate Unifrax’s prior use/sale.
On appeal, the Federal Circuit sided with duPont — reflecting on the requirement for corroboration.
[O]ur case law does not require that evidence have a source independent of the inventors on every aspect of conception and reduction to practice. . . Here, the law requires only that the corroborative evidence, including circumstantial evidence, support the credibility of the inventors’ story.
The reason for corroboration is a concern that inventors will commit perjury. Thus, the role of corroboration is help ensure inventor credibility.
In this case, the Federal Circuit held that the prohibition on registering “immoral” or “scandalous” marks is a facial violation of a registrant’s First Amendment free speech rights. Here, Brunetti is seeking to register the mark “FUCT,” which the solicitor identified as a close homonym of “the paradigmatic word of profanity in our language.” Oral arguments were held on April 15 before the nine Supreme Court justices.
independent of any views that they may express.” This would include words like FUCT, as well as certain sexually explicit images, for instance.
Here, it is clear that some regulations would be allowable — such as prohibiting registration of “obscene” marks. However, the statute goes to far by broadly prohibiting registration of both “immoral” and “scandalous” marks. The question is whether the Supreme Court is willing to effectively rewrite the statute to fit within the constitutional limits. Justice Gorsuch got to the point: “We can fix your [overbroad statute] problem for you, I got that. . . [But] how is a person who wants to get a mark supposed to tell what the PTO is going to do? Is it a flip of the coin?” As an example, this case focuses on FUCT, but FCUK and FVCK are already registered marks.
There are two important points to be made. First, the government does not defend the plain language of the statute. Nor does it defend how it’s been consistently interpreted for the last 70 years. Rather, it asks this Court to validate a hypothetical statute not enacted.
no way to make a — a sensible determination between those that come in and those must stay out.
Mr. SOMMER: Cohen could have said fooey on the draft, and that’s what the government says he should have done, and if he said something else, he should have been arrested and his conviction should have been affirmed, but we know his conviction was reversed. . . . You know, if the government had a list of seven dirty words [that cannot be registered], would that be constitutional?
JUSTICE ALITO: Oh, come on. You know, come on.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Cohen can have his T-shirt, but we are not going to trademark them, and we’ve held just last year that a patent is a public benefit that can be withdrawn without a judge. Why isn’t this also similarly a public benefit rather than a private right?
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Why can’t the government say, no, we’re not going to give you space on our public registry for words that we find are not acceptable?
MR. SOMMER: Would the government be allowed to refuse registration of ownership of property because it’s bought by a church with a name that’s considered offensive? Could the Coast Guard refuse to register a boat because they think the name of the boat is a little bit salacious?
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Actually, you’re right.
MR. SOMMER: We have a facial challenge here, so the question is, is it overbroad? And it doesn’t matter if Mr. Brunetti’s mark should be granted or not. It’s the statute as written and as applied, without exception, covers a fair amount of clearly core speech, of high-value speech.
[the risk of regulation here is that it can] take our level of discussion in our diverse society . . . to, you know, the lowest common denominator, the most squeamish among us.
Sommer made his point here, but where he faltered was on his additional argument that many of the scandalous restrictions are viewpoint based — the justices did not appear to follow that line of thinking.
JUSTICE BREYER: No, I don’t agree with it’s viewpoint. I think that very often the word involved in your case and the racial slur is not viewpoint. It is used to insult somebody, rather like fighting words, or it’s used to call attention to yourself. That’s the purpose of the slur. That isn’t viewpoint. Fighting words isn’t viewpoint. Or, if it is, it’s overcome.
MR. SOMMER: I don’t think the profanity always expresses viewpoint.
JUSTICE KAVANAUGH: When does it not?
JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Some — some of us would say that a vulgar word with relationship to selling clothes is sort of irrelevant?
MR. SOMMER: Well, it’s not irrelevant because, as Justice Ginsburg pointed out, the audience that Mr. Brunetti is appealing to is young men who want to be rebels. And this is how they do it.
Some interesting points of the discussion: does the “scandalous” nature of the mark apply to the public as a whole or only potential consumers (gov says “public as a whole”); if the statute is struck down, can the PTO still reject obscene marks (ans: yes, if not used in commerce).
But with respect to the single-most offensive racial slur, the PTO is currently holding in abeyance applications that incorporate that word, pending this Court’s decision on — leave open the possibility that that word might be viewed as scandalous.
Section 2 of the Lanham Act includes a host of reasons for refusing to register a trademark. The PTO may not register immoral or scandalous marks; marks that are deceptive; marks that disparage, falsely suggest a connection with, bring into contempt, or disrepute “persons, living or dead, institutions, beliefs, or national symbols;” governmental flags or coats of arms; “name, portrait, or signature” of a living person (without consent) or of a dead President “during the life of his widow;” marks likely to cause confusion or mistake because of their resemblance to other registered marks; marks that are merely descriptive or deceptively misdescriptive of the goods; etc. If the Federal Circuit is affirmed here, it will be interesting to see what comes next.
Rather than pursue its side of the appeal, the Examiner withdraws the pending rejections — and then re-opens prosecution with a new set of rejections.
Although few cases go through this more than one cycle. Gilbert Hyatt has long been an exception — both in terms of how he treats the PTO and how he is treated by the PTO.
The examiner may, with approval from the supervisory patent examiner, reopen prosecution to enter a new ground of rejection in response to appellant’s brief.
Hyatt’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court argues that a patent applicant has a right to appeal — and that this examination cycling violates his statutory rights. In particular, Hyatt points to 35 U.S.C. § 134 and § 6.
134(a). An applicant for a patent, any of whose claims has been twice rejected, may appeal from the decision of the primary examiner to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, having once paid the fee for such appeal.
6(b). Duties.—The Patent Trial and Appeal Board shall— (1) on written appeal of an applicant, review adverse decisions of examiners upon applications for patents pursuant to section 134(a).
In a remarkably parallel situation from the early 1900’s the U.S. Supreme Court held that mandamus was appropriate where the examiner refused to forward cases to the Board. U.S. ex rel. Steinmetz v. Allen, 192 U.S. 543 (1904).
Whether MPEP § 1207.04 violates patent applicants’ statutory right of appeal following a second rejection.
If you’re in the Iowa region, we invite you to attend Patent Law’s New Directions: An Update from Director Porcari at the University of Iowa College of Law on Tuesday, May 14, from 2:45 PM to 5:00 PM. Damien Porcari, Director of the Elijah J. McCoy Midwest Regional United States Patent and Trademark Office, will talk about the new 101 guidelines, design patents and USPTO policies.
Two hours of CLE credit are pending. There is no cost for the seminar, but we ask that attendees register in advance. More information and a registration link can be found the Iowa Innovation, Business & Law Center website.
On appeal, the Federal Circuit has sided with the ATI — finding the patentee’s Unifed Shader claims patentable over the prior art. U.S. Patents 7,742,053, 6,897,871, and 7,327,369 (Graphics processing architecture employing a ‘unified shader’).
These patents are pre-AIA and the patentee is claiming that its invention pre-dates the prior art. The PTAB agreed that ATI’s conception was early enough, but concluded that the patentee lacked diligence.
A patent owner need not prove the inventor continuously exercised reasonable diligence throughout the critical period; it must show there was reasonably continuous diligence.
Perfect Surgical Techniques, Inc. v. Olympus Am., Inc., 841 F.3d 1004 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (emphases original).
In the IPR, the inventor provided testimony and supporting document that showed that at least one person worked on the design of a working model embodying the invention every business day during the diligence period. The PTAB, however, dismissed this evidence because at least some of the time was spent working on alternative chip designs and optional features not particularly claimed.
On appeal, the Federal Circuit severely chastized the PTAB, Solicitor, and PTO Director for rejecting diligence while failing to identify any delays or gaps in activity.
In January 2019, the Federal Circuit issued a non-precedential opinion in this trademark case. Based upon a USPTO request, the court has now reissue the decision as precedential. See Fed. Cir. R. 32.1(e).
As part of the trademark registration process, an applicant must submit a specimen of the mark as used in commerce. Here, Siny is seeking to register the mark CASALANA for its knit wool fabric and submitted a printout from a webpage purporting to show the mark being used in commerce.
The page did not allow direct ordering but simply listed a phone number and email “for sales information.” In addition, the mark was not shown on images of the fabric itself or its packaging but rather simply in the website text. The examining attorney and TTAB found the specimen insufficient to prove use in commerce. Here, prior precedent indicates that a specimen using the mark on a “display associated with goods” is only sufficient if it is a “point of sale” display and not mere advertising.
J. A. Lindeman & Co.
On April 3, 2019, President Trump released a “memorandum on combating trafficking in counterfeit and pirated goods” which calls for a report on the state of the issue to be completed by November 1, 2019. Homeland security is in charge, with consultations from Commerce, Justice, OMB, USTR, and others, including intellectual property rights holders.
The Administration is treating counterfeit goods and copyright piracy as homeland security and law enforcement issues — directing those groups to to step-up their efforts.
Although counterfeit goods may be costing the makers of branded products, the companies trafficking in the goods are making money. It will be interesting to see the extent that those companies operating on an international scale will be willing to cooperate with US law enforcement.
I first worked with Wes Austin back in 2006 as he developed his Dunes CLE program and later followed with some interest his Utah-based patent firm Austin-Rapp. As the image shows below, Austin has expanded from patent law into comedy as well. His new sitcom – THE IP SECTION – merges the two (as well as Mormonism) and stars a patent lawyer who wants to be a stand-up comedian.
Do any of your experiences as a patent attorney or inventor fit easily into a comedy routine?
The patent here claims a user-authentication method for a “single-sign-on . . . within a federated computing environment.” The basic setup here is that user known to a “first system” wants access to resources on a “second system” that doesn’t know about the user. The invention works by the first system providing an “identifier” associated with the user and the second system creating a user account using that identifier — not too complex here. A “single-sign-on” is basically a setup for user convenience so that the user only logs-in on one system but can access the whole federation.
A federation is a loosely coupled affiliation of enterprises which adhere to certain standards of interoperability; the federation provides a mechanism of trust among those enterprises with respect to certain computational operations for the users within the federation.
In the appeal here, the patentee argues that the Board too-broadly defined the terms “federated computing environment.” Of some interest here, both IBM and the IPR petitioners (Priceline, OpenTable, etc.) agreed upon the term’s definition and that it was limiting even though it appeared only in the claim preamble. The PTAB disagreed with the parties — and in particular held that the term “federation . . . is not limited to enterprises” but could instead more generally includes a group of “entities.” Under the Board’s interpretation, any two computer systems could be seen as “entities” even if both are within a single “enterprise.” That broader scope is important because the closest prior art authentication system involved two computers within a single enterprise.
On appeal, the Federal Circuit found the PTAB’s construction unreasonable – given the plain definition in the specification. On remand, the PTAB will consider whether the prior art still anticipates the invention based upon this narrower construction.
In the context of the present invention, a federation is a set of distinct entities, such as enterprises, organizations, institutions, etc., that cooperate to provide a single-sign-on, ease-of-use experience to a user. . . . The terms ‘entity’ or ‘party’ generally refers to an organization, an individual, or a system that operates on behalf of an organization, an individual, or another system.
Notice that this definition of federation is not limited to enterprises, but instead is tied to the broader category of “entities,” and entities include “systems” — i.e., computers. Thus, the Board found that a federation can be created by two computer systems even if operating within the same business enterprise.
In the appeal, the Federal Circuit rejected this approach holding here that the “such as” language limits was intended as an exclusive listing of what counts as federation elements.
The column 10 passage refers to entities “such as” the ones listed and includes “etc.”—both of which, in this context, indicate that only things of a type similar to the itemized ones are covered, namely, other establishments or ventures or firms or the like. We have recognized that “such as” and “etc.” sometimes have just that meaning. (“rule of ejusdem generis). That understanding is the only reasonable one for the passage, given the plain meaning of the definitional and other language we have already discussed.
It is hard for me to say what the take-away is for patent drafters on this claim construction except – who knows what the court will decide?
I’ll note here that the IPR petitioners settled the case with IBM but the USPTO stepped in to defend the PTAB sua sponte claim construction decision.
Even if the Board were correct that Mellmer is “silent” … that characterization would not alone support a finding that there was no user authentication action…. Silence in that sense would not by itself suffice for the Petitioner to meet its burden to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that there was no user authentication action in this scenario.
In other words – a negative limitation can be powerful. On appeal, the Federal Circuit has reversed the holdings based upon single-sign-on being found in this reference.

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