Opinion ID: 3201535
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Motivation to Combine/Reasonable

Text: Expectation of Success The Board found that Zavgorodny would not be “obvious to use” with Tsien or Ju because its azidomethyl group would not be removed quantitatively (at or near 100%). Intelligent Bio-Sys., Inc., 2015 WL 996355, at , . IBS argues that, “[b]ecause the claims do not require quantitative cleavage, the Board erred by imposing such a requirement through the reasonable expectation of success analysis.” Appellant Br. 38. To the extent the Board’s decision is based on the “reasonable expectation of success” requirement, we agree. The reasonable expectation of success requirement refers to the likelihood of success in combining references to meet the limitations of the claimed invention. “[F]ailure to consider the appropriate scope of the . . . patent’s claimed invention in evaluating the reasonable expectation of success . . . constitutes a legal error that [is] review[ed] without deference.” Allergan, 754 F.3d at 966 (emphasis added). Under the Board’s uncontested construction, “claim 1 does not require removal of the protecting group to allow subsequent nucleotide incorporation,” let alone quantitative removal. Intelligent Bio-Sys., Inc., 2015 WL 996355, at . Accordingly, it is of no moment that Zavgorodny’s protecting group would not be removed quantitatively in Tsien or Ju’s sequencing method— removal is simply not required by the claim of the ’537 patent. The Board seemed to believe that the “reasonable expectation of success” inquiry looked to whether one would reasonably expect the prior art references to operate as those references intended once combined. That is not the correct inquiry—one must have a motivation to combine accompanied by a reasonable expectation of achieving what is claimed in the patent-at-issue. The Board’s reliance on the absence of a reasonable expectation of success was, thus, improper. See id. at –6 (citing KSR, 550 U.S. at 421 to support the proposition “that a INTELLIGENT BIO-SYSTEMS, INC. v. 13 ILLUMINA CAMBRIDGE LTD. conclusion of obviousness requires a reasonable expectation of success”). Yet this court “sit[s] to review judgments, not opinions.” Stratoflex, Inc. v. Aeroquip Corp., 713 F.2d 1530, 1540 (Fed. Cir. 1983). And while the Board conflated two different legal concepts—reasonable expectation of success and motivation to combine—it nevertheless made sufficient factual findings to support its judgment that the claims at issue are not invalid. It was IBS’s burden to demonstrate both “that a skilled artisan would have been motivated to combine the teachings of the prior art references to achieve the claimed invention, and that the skilled artisan would have had a reasonable expectation of success in doing so.” Kinetic Concepts, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc. 688 F.3d 1342, 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (quoting Procter & Gamble Co. v. Teva Pharm. USA, Inc., 566 F.3d 989, 994 (Fed. Cir. 2009) (internal quotation marks omitted)); In re Cyclobenzaprine Hydrochloride Extended– Release Capsule Patent Litig., 676 F.3d 1063, 1068–69 (Fed. Cir. 2012). Despite the loose language employed by the Board, its factual findings support its conclusion that the claims are not invalid. IBS argued in its revised initial petition to the Board that the combination of Tsien or Ju with Zavgorodny was based entirely on a shared purpose: SBS. IBS argued that an ordinary artisan would have a motivation to combine Tsien or Ju with Zavgorodny: “[O]ne of ordinary skill in the art, in order to improve the efficiency, reliability, and robustness of the sequencing by synthesis method taught in Tsien, would have been motivated to use other protecting groups that meet the criteria of Tsien, such as the azidomethyl group taught by Zavgorodny.” J.A. 145 (emphasis added). This argument follows immediately after IBS lists the “criteria for the successful use of 3′-blocking groups,” which includes “quantitative deblocking.” J.A. 144. 14 INTELLIGENT BIO-SYSTEMS, INC. v. ILLUMINA CAMBRIDGE LTD. The Board, therefore, was justified in finding that, “despite having acknowledged the quantitative deblocking requirement in Tsien (Pet. 37), the Petition did not provide a specific or credible explanation why an ordinary artisan would have expected Zavgorodny’s azidomethyl protecting group to meet Tsien’s quantitative deblocking requirement under conditions suitable for use in Tsien’s sequencing methods.” Intelligent Bio-Sys., Inc., 2015 WL 996355, at . While this shortcoming is irrelevant to a finding that there was no reasonable expectation of success in meeting the claims of the ’537 patent, which do not require quantitative deblocking at all, it is central to a finding of no motivation to combine. This is because the petitioner’s sole argument for why one of skill in the art would be motivated to combine Zavgorodny’s azidomethyl group with Tsien’s SBS method was because it would meet Tsien’s quantitative deblocking requirement. “When an obviousness determination relies on the combination of two or more references, there must be some suggestion or motivation to combine the references.” WMS Gaming, Inc. v. Int’l Game Tech., 184 F.3d 1339, 1355 (Fed. Cir. 1999); see also Dome Patent L.P. v. Lee, 799 F.3d 1372, 1380 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (“If all elements of a claim are found in the prior art, as is the case here, the factfinder must further consider the factual questions of whether a person of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine those references, and whether in making that combination, a person of ordinary skill would have had a reasonable expectation of success.”). There is, moreover, substantial evidence to support a finding that a person of ordinary skill would not have had reason to combine Tsien or Ju with Zavgorodny to achieve the claimed invention. In its decision the Board acknowledged two background references presented by Illumina: Loubinoux, which teaches that azidomethyl methyl groups are removed from phenols with modest efficiency (60-80% yield), and Greene & Wuts, which teaches that INTELLIGENT BIO-SYSTEMS, INC. v. 15 ILLUMINA CAMBRIDGE LTD. removal of an azidomethyl methyl group from the 3′ hydroxyl position of a deoxyribonucleotide moiety is likely to proceed with even lower efficiency. Intelligent BioSys., Inc., 2015 WL 996355, at –8 (citing Loubinoux (J.A. 974–75) and Theodora W. Greene & Peter G.M. Wuts, Protective Groups in Organic Synthesis 246–92 (3d ed. 1999) (J.A. 863–970)). These references support a conclusion that the claimed efficiency that allegedly motivated the combination would not be achieved and that a person of ordinary skill in this field would not have been motivated to use the azidomethyl group of Zavgorodny as a “protecting group [that] can be modified or removed to expose a 3′ [hydroxyl] group” of a nucleic acid molecule, as the claim requires. This is so because the azidomethyl group would have been expected to perform inefficiently in that role. IBS submitted an initial petition that articulated a set of rationales for why the challenged claims were invalid, including why a person of ordinary skill would be motivated to combine the prior art references at issue. IBS made a clear argument as to why a person of ordinary skill would be motivated to combine the prior art references at issue and Illumina demonstrated the error in that argument, which the Board credited. This factual finding by the Board is supported by substantial evidence. The Board did not err in finding that the grounds of invalidity described in IBS’s petition were not established.