Opinion ID: 4242961
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: dependent claims argued separately

Text: The Board held that claims 17, 33, 58 and 59 were al- lowable over the prior art, that claims 38 and 39 were not indefinite, and that claim 44 was enabled and was supported by the written description. Hayward challenges each of those determinations. Claim 17 and its substantively identical independent counterpart, claim 58, contain the so-called “ignoring” limitation: “the pump controller ignores a request for increased flow rate from the control system during at least one of a backwash cycle and a lock out state.” Hayward argues that these claims are obvious over an unidentified combination, presumably involving Discenzo in combination with U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005/0123408 (“Koehl”), U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005/0226731 (“Mehlhorn”), or Jones. Hayward’s arguments fail. On appeal, Hayward does not put forth any discernible reason an ordinary artisan would combine Discenzo with any of these references. Moreover, substantial evidence supports the Board’s holding that the cited references, alone or in combination, do not disclose or teach the “ignoring” limitation. Jones and Koehl respectively teach an emergency shutdown of the motor in case of a life-threatening suction entrapment or a fault condition. The Board correctly recognized that teaching shutting off a motor entirely is not “ignoring” a signal—it is failing to receive a signal in the first place. Regarding Mehlhorn, while Hayward maps the “pump controller” in the ’597 patent to the “controller 150” in Mehlhorn, it does not identify anything in Mehlhorn that can be mapped to “the control system,” as the claims require. Hayward has thus failed to show any teaching in the cited references of the “ignoring” limitation. Claim 33 and its substantively identical independent counterpart, claim 59, do not contain the “ignoring” limitation but instead recite “wherein the pump controller 12 HAYWARD INDUSTRIES, INC. v. PENTAIR WATER POOL AND SPA alters the performance of the pumping system to provide an increased flow rate necessary for proper operation of the heater.” The Board did not explicitly address this limitation, instead grouping claims 33 and 59 with claims 17 and 58 without comment, despite the fact that these two sets of claims contained different limitations. We thus vacate the Board’s holding that claims 33 and 59 are not invalid, and remand to the Board for consideration in the first instance. Hayward next argues that newly added claims 38 and 39 are indefinite. Those claims recite the limitations “the pumping system considers the amount of water movement in determining whether the number of turnovers over the specified time period is achieved” and “wherein an amount of water movement is associated with operation of at least one auxiliary device.” We agree with the Board that the component doing the “considering” can be any part of the pumping system, and that this is not indefinite. Hayward argues that newly added claim 44 lacks en- ablement and written description support. That claim adds the limitation: “wherein the information received from the control system includes an operational state including at least one of a filtration mode, a vacuum mode, and a heating mode.” The Board correctly held that claim 44 is fully supported under 35 U.S.C. § 112 ¶ 1. Although Hayward is correct that the ’597 patent does not use the word “mode” in the specification, it does disclose receiving information from a control system, including receiving operational states. ’597 patent, col. 10, ll. 37–43 (generally teaching the use of various operational states; id. at col. 10, ll. 60–62 (teaching altering motor operations based on the received parameter with respect to the needs of a water heater); id. at col. 7, ll. 38–46. Moreover, we agree with Pentair that the ’597 patent supports the modes limitation through the incorporation by reference of U.S. Pat. No. 8,019,479 (“’479 patent”), from which the HAYWARD INDUSTRIES, INC. v. PENTAIR WATER POOL AND SPA 13 ’597 patent claims priority. ’597 patent, col. 1, ll. 6–10; 37 C.F.R. § 1.57(d) (allowing disclosures in a U.S. Patent incorporated by reference to provide § 112 support). Hayward provides no support for its argument that the publication of the’479 patent after the filing date of the ’597 patent disqualifies the ’479 patent from providing § 112 support. Finally, we reject Hayward’s cursory and unsupported arguments that claim 44 is invalidated (presumably as obvious) by nine rejection sets that disclose a swimming pool pump with filter.