Opinion ID: 4241440
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Overview of the Prior Art

Text: The Board’s unpatentability determinations are based on two primary references: (1) U.S. Patent No. 5,343,970 to Severinsky (“Severinsky”), and (2) PCT Application Publication WO 00/15455 (“’455 PCT publication”). We briefly describe these references below.
Severinsky, which issued to a co-inventor of the ’634 and ’097 patents, describes a control strategy for selecting operation modes in a hybrid vehicle. Severinsky teaches that its vehicle’s internal combustion engine is used only near “its most efficient operational point,” which Severinsky defines as when the engine “produces 60–90% of its maximum torque.” Severinsky, col. 20, ll. 63–67. Severinsky also describes circumstances in which it is efficient to use the engine (such as “in highway cruising”), other circumstances in which it is more efficient to use an electric motor (such as “in traffic”), and still other circumstances in which torque is supplied by both the electric motor and the engine (such as in “acceleration/hill climbing mode”). Id. col. 6, l. 63 through col. 7, l. 16; see also id. col. 14, ll. 15–18; id. col. 22, ll. 48–51. We previously considered Severinsky in two appeals from IPR proceedings involving Paice’s hybrid vehicle patents. See Paice II, 681 F. App’x 904; Paice III, 685 F. App’x 940. In those cases, we affirmed the Board’s determinations that Severinsky, in combination with other references, renders obvious various claims of Paice’s patents.
The ’455 PCT publication names the same inventors as the ’634 and ’097 patents and claims priority to applications that appear in both patents’ chain of priority. The publication is directed to similar hybrid vehicle technology. PAICE LLC v. FORD MOTOR COMPANY 7 The ’455 PCT publication was published more than one year before the April 2001 continuation-in-part application in which the electrical claims first appeared and therefore nominally qualifies as prior art to those claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) (2006).