Opinion ID: 4243797
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Board’s Final Written Decisions

Text: After being sued for infringing claims of the ’405 patent in district court, Arctic Cat filed two petitions for inter partes review, challenging the patentability of claims 1–38 as obvious in view of combinations of certain prior art references, including Denney, Furuhashi, and Hickey. In one petition, Arctic Cat argued that all relevant claims were obvious in view of the combination of Denney and Furuhashi. See 1427 Decision, 2016 WL 498434, at . 1 In the other petition, it contended that all thirty-eight claims were obvious in view of Hickey and at least one other reference. See 1428 Decision, 2016 WL 498539, at . The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office instituted review on these grounds, and the Board issued two Final Written Decisions on February 4, 2016. See 1427 Decision, 2016 WL 498434, at ; 1428 Decision, 2016 WL 498539, at . These decisions, and relevant arguments raised by the parties as part of these IPRs, are discussed below.
In the 1427 IPR, the Board considered whether the relevant claims were obvious over the combination of Denney and Furuhashi. With respect to claim 1, Arctic 1 Arctic Cat argued that all claims except depend- ent claims 14 and 35 would have been obvious over the combination of Denney and Furuhashi, and that these two claims would have been obvious over the combination of Denney, Furuhashi, and a third prior art reference. 1427 Decision, 2016 WL 498434, at . In the proceedings below, Polaris did not “set forth any assertions concerning the separate patentability of any of dependent claims 14 and 35.” Id. Polaris does not argue that dependent claims 14 and 35 are separately patentable on appeal. POLARIS INDUSTRIES, INC. v. ARCTIC CAT, INC. 9 Cat argued that Denney discloses every limitation recited in that claim, with the exception of limitations relating to four-wheel drive and the limitation “a transmission coupled to and extending rearwardly from the engine.” 1427 Decision, 2016 WL 498434, at . Arctic Cat relied on Furuhashi for these limitations, and provided “three separate rationales for combining Denney and Furuhashi to arrive at the subject matter of independent claim 1.” Id. (citing paragraphs 77–82 of Arctic Cat’s opening expert declaration). Arctic Cat further argued and submitted evidence that a person of skill in the art would have been motivated to position the protective panel, front driveshaft fuel tank, battery, and driveshaft disclosed in Furuhashi within the vehicle disclosed in Denney in the manner recited in claims 15–19. The Board determined that all thirty-eight claims had been proven unpatentable as obvious in view of Denney and Furuhashi, and in so ruling, rejected Polaris’s myriad arguments to the contrary. First, it disagreed with Polaris that skilled artisans would not have been motivated to modify Denney into a four-wheel drive vehicle because Denney discloses a desire for a low center of gravity, and therefore “teach[es] away” from including anything under the seating area, such as the front drive shaft and fuel tank of Furuhashi. Id. at . The Board reasoned that, although Denney “discloses a desire for a low center of gravity,” this desire is simply one of several “subjective preferences” that is “a tool of limited value in evaluating obviousness” due to its “infinite[] variab[ility]” that could be overcome by other known preferences, such as adding four-wheel drive to a two-wheel drive vehicle. Id. at , . The Board likewise rejected Polaris’s assertion that the combination of Denney and Furuhashi does not disclose or suggest the additional limitations recited in dependent claims 15–19, relying in part on its discussion of “subjective preferences” articulated in its analysis of 10 POLARIS INDUSTRIES, INC. v. ARCTIC CAT, INC. the obviousness of claim 1. Id. at –15. Finally, with respect to claim 34 and its dependents, the Board, among other things, rejected Polaris’s evidence of secondary considerations of nonobviousness. Id. at –17. In particular, the Board was not persuaded that Polaris showed that its “RZR vehicles are covered by claims 34 and 36–38 of the ’405 patent,” and found the supporting testimony from Polaris’s expert, Dr. John Moskwa, to be “conclusory” and “devoid of any analysis as to how the RZR vehicles are covered by” these claims. Id. at .
In the 1428 IPR, the Board examined whether the claims of the ’405 patent would have been obvious over combinations that rely on Hickey as the primary reference. The Board began its analysis by construing terms recited in the limitations “a front drive shaft extending between the transmission and the front axle assembly” and “a rear drive shaft extending between the transmission and the rear axle assembly.” 1428 Decision, 2016 WL 498539, at –6. The Board construed the term “drive shaft” to mean “a shaft structure that transmits torque, and excludes other hardware, such as universal joints, couplers, bearings, and interaxle differentials.” Id. at . It construed the phrase “extending between” as requiring “that a given drive shaft, and only that given drive shaft, must account for the entire distance between the transmission and the respective axle assembly.” Id. at . The Board found that Hickey’s “shaft 22 is connected to transmission 14 . . . via at least interaxle differential 20 and universal joint 26.” Id. at . The Board therefore concluded “that Hickey does not disclose or suggest ‘a front drive shaft extending between the transmission and the front axle assembly,’ as recited in independent claim 1,” and determined that Arctic Cat had not shown, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the claims of the ’405 POLARIS INDUSTRIES, INC. v. ARCTIC CAT, INC. 11 patent were obvious over combinations including Hickey. Id. Polaris appeals the 1427 Decision, while Arctic Cat conditionally cross-appeals the 1428 Decision. We have jurisdiction over the appeals under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A) (2012).