Court Opinion

ID: 9488055
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:35:11.386299+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:40.160922
License: Public Domain

MICHEL, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
As the majority observes, the question presented by Soni’s appeal is a narrow and factual one: namely, “whether the data in Soni’s patent specification show that the compositions of the claims exhibit unexpectedly improved physical and electrical properties compared to lower molecular weight compositions.” Slip op. at 749. I am unable to answer this controlling question in the affirmative. But, in reversing the Board’s decision, the majority overturns a well-settled facet of the law of rejections for obviousness by eliminating altogether one of the two requirements of a successful rebuttal case of unexpectedly improved results — namely, ob*752jective proof that the observed improvement was indeed unexpected. Having so amputated the applicable legal rule, the majority finds clear error where, applying precedent, I see no error at all. I therefore respectfully dissent.
DISCUSSION
According to Soni’s specification, the claimed invention derives entirely from the “discover[y]” that use of “a melt-processable polymer having a molecular weight greater than 150,000” yields a conductive filler-polymer composition with “significantly improved physical and electrical properties, compared to those [made with] polymers of lower molecular weight, for the same filler loading.” These improvements are, according to Soni, both “valuable and surprising.”
The specification supports the assertion of significantly improved properties with data from a set of tests comparing two compositions. According to the specification,
A number of physical tests were carried out on samples of polyethylene to show the significant improvement in the physical properties that is [sic, are] observed at a molecular weight value of 150,000. Tensile tests, peel tests, resistivity behavior tests and recovery behavior tests were carried out. Each test was carried out on samples of Marlex HXM 50100 (Polyethylene, molecular weight 203,000, a composition according to the invention) and also on comparative samples of Marlex 6003 (polyethylene, molecular weight 148,000, outside the scope of the present invention).
After detailing the results of these comparative tests, the specification continues with the following, ostensibly summary, assertion:
The tensile, peel, resistivity behavior and recovery tests show significantly improved properties for a polymer having a molecular [weight] of 203,000 compared to one having a molecular weight of 148,000, which are much greater than would have been predicted given the difference in their molecular weights.
It is critically important to note that the final phrase of this sentence, an assertion made without objective support, is the only evidence Soni has ever offered to show that the variety of improvements observed in the change from a 148,000-molecular-weight to a 203,000-molecular-weight polymer were “much greater than would have been predicted” — that is, were unexpectedly large. It is also important to note that the majority concedes that the data show the observed degree of improvement but not that the observed degree of improvement was unexpected. Slip op. at 750 (Soni indicates improvements by “specific data,” but only “states” unexpectedness).
The examiner rejected Soni’s claims as anticipated by or obvious from a number of prior art references, and the Board affirmed the rejection on obviousness grounds. During the course of its analysis, the Board focused on the specification’s assertion “that the improvement in properties ... was ‘much greater than would have been predicted’,” but found the record “devoid of any evidence to support that conclusion.” The Board found that this statement, while some evidence of unobviousness, was “clearly insufficient to outweigh the evidence of obviousness of record.” It adhered to this view on reconsideration, observing that the only evidence of unexpectedness Soni brought forward “consists of conclusory statements made in the original specification concerning unpredictable differences, which statements are unsupported by any factual data.”
On appeal, Soni “concede[s] that the claimed invention would be prima facie obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103, but contend[s] that the evidence in the specification clearly rebuts the prima facie case and establishes the patentability of the claims.” Soni’s contention persuades me no more than it did the Board.
The applicable legal rules are both clear and longstanding. First, as we noted in In re Oetiker, “[t]he prima facie case [of obviousness] is a procedural tool of patent examination, allocating the burdens of going forward as between examiner and applicant.... As discussed in In re Piasecki[, 745 F.2d 1468, 1472, 223 USPQ 785, 788 (Fed.Cir.1984) ], the examiner bears the initial burden, on review of the prior art or on any other ground, of presenting a prima facie case of *753unpatentability. If that burden is met, the burden of coming forward ivith evidence or argument shifts to the applicant.” 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed.Cir.1992) (emphasis added) (citations omitted). Soni concedes that the examiner properly made out a prima facie case of obviousness, and thus concedes that it bore the burden of coming forward with evidence to rebut that ease. Second, “whether [the applicant’s] rebuttal evidence is sufficient to persuade the examiner that unexpected results exist is an evidentiary matter left for the trier of fact,” In re Johnson, 747 F.2d 1456, 1460, 223 USPQ 1260, 1263 (Fed.Cir.1984), and reversed on appeal only where clearly erroneous, In re Caveney, 761 F.2d 671, 674, 226 USPQ 1, 3 (Fed.Cir.1985). Far from clearly erring, the Board correctly evaluated Soni’s rebuttal evidence, according to the controlling eases, as slight and insufficient.
One way for an applicant to satisfy the burden of coming forward with evidence to rebut the prima facie case of obviousness is to demonstrate that the claimed invention yields unexpected results. In re Davies, 475 F.2d 667, 670, 177 USPQ 381, 384 (CCPA 1973). As In re Lindner makes clear, the applicant’s rebuttal evidence of unexpectedness must be objective:
The affidavit and specification do contain allegations that synergistic results are obtained with all the claimed compositions, but ... mere lawyers’ arguments unsupported by factual evidence are insufficient to establish unexpected results. Likewise, mere conclusory statements in the specification and affidavits are entitled to little weight when the Patent Office questions the efficacy of those statements.... [W]e agree with the board that there is insufficient evidence to overcome the case of prima facie obviousness found to exist here.
457 F.2d 506, 508-09, 173 USPQ 356, 358 (CCPA 1972) (emphasis added) (citations omitted). See also In re De Blauwe, 736 F.2d 699, 705, 222 USPQ 191, 196 (Fed.Cir.1984) (“It is well settled that unexpected results must be established by factual evidence. Mere argument or conclusory statements in the specification does not suffice.”); In re Wood, 582 F.2d 638, 642, 199 USPQ 137, 140 (CCPA 1978) (“Mere lawyer’s arguments and conclusory statements in the specification, unsupported by objective evidence, are insufficient to establish unexpected results.”). See also In re Carabateas, 357 F.2d 998, 1001, 149 USPQ 44, 46-47 (CCPA 1966) (Rich, J., concurring in the judgment) (“[T]he art makes no suggestion whatever that a reversal of the ester linkage would result in an increased activity approximating the nineteen-fold increase found by appellant. At the very best, the art suggests an increase of the order of four to eight times.... The question is not, it seems to me, whether the art suggests an improvement, but rather whether it reasonably suggests the particular improvement relied upon for patentability in both its qualitative and quantitative sense.”). The majority acknowledges this principle but declines to apply it to the case at bar.
Soni failed to come forward with factual evidence tending to establish the unexpectedness of the observed degree of improvement in the claimed composition’s physical properties, choosing instead to rely on the combined force of its data about the improvements and the subjective conclusory statement that such improvements “are much greater than would have been predicted given the difference in their molecular weights.” The Board read this statement, quite naturally, as a concession that some lesser degree of improvement in properties would have been predicted from the difference in molecular weights alone, or, in the Board’s words, as an “acknowledge[ment]” that “one of ordinary skill in the relevant art would have expected higher molecular weight polymers to result in better composition properties.”1 In fight of the *754concession, the lack of objective evidence of the unexpectedness, as distinct from the magnitude, of the improvements proved fatal to Soni’s appeal before the Board, just as cases such as Lindner require. The majority, however, now excuses Soni by eliminating the requirement that the improvement’s unexpectedness be demonstrated objectively.
The majority claims that “the Board accepted this [concessionary] part of the statement as true, [but] it declined to accept the statement’s conclusion that the improvements were much greater than would have been predicted,” and then criticizes this reasoning as “illogical.” Slip op. at 750-51. There is nothing in the Board’s opinion, however, to suggest that it failed to credit Soni with the statement’s full worth — namely, the worth of a candid report of Soni’s sincere subjective belief that he would not have predicted the changes in properties that he observed on the basis of the difference in the polymers’ molecular weights. Of course, such a conclusory statement reporting the inventor’s subjective belief has virtually no worth at all as evidence of unexpectedness; despite the majority’s appeal to them, Soni’s actual candor is not doubted and his duty of candor is not relevant. Slip op. at 750-51. Our cases require objective rebuttal evidence of unexpectedness. Thus, far from falling prey to faulty reasoning, the Board correctly found that Soni’s conclusory statement regarding the unexpectedness of the improvements, however heartfelt, was “clearly insufficient to outweigh the evidence of obviousness of record.”2
Indeed, the Board’s approach would have been proper even if Soni had never conceded that a lesser degree of improvement would have been predicted based on the change in molecular weights alone. Neither the specification nor any post-rejection submission contains objective evidence3 tending to establish either (1) a baseline of expected improvements against which to measure the observed improvements, or (2) the lack of any such baseline expectation in the relevant prior art, as a result of which all degrees of improvement would be unexpected. Without establishing a baseline or the unavailability of one, however, unexpectedness cannot be proved.
Our decision in In re Merck & Co., Inc., 800 F.2d 1091, 231 USPQ 375 (Fed.Cir.1986), illustrates the point. Merck was the assign-ee of a patent claiming a method of treating depression in humans comprising oral administration of amitriptyline, or its non-toxic salts, in a daily dosage of 25 to 250 milligrams. During reexamination, the examiner rejected the relevant claims on both anticipation and obviousness grounds, and the Board sustained the rejection for obviousness on review. The prior art taught, inter alia, that (1) amitriptyline is psychoaetive, (2) imipra-mine, which differs from amitriptyline only in the replacement of the unsaturated carbon atom in its central ring with a nitrogen atom, is a highly effective antidepressant, (3) the replacement of the nitrogen atom in the central ring of a phenothiazine compound with an unsaturated carbon atom yielded a thiox-anthene derivative with strongly similar pharmacological properties, and (4) imipra-mine and amitriptyline have a variety of similar pharmacological properties unrelated to the treatment of depression. Id. at 1094-95, 281 USPQ at 377-78. On appeal, we affirmed the Board’s conclusion that “one of ordinary skill in the medicinal chemical arts *755... would have expected amitriptyline to resemble imipramine in the alleviation of depression in humans.” Id. at 1097, 231 USPQ at 379. Merck contended, as it had before the Board, that amitriptyline had unexpectedly more potent sedative and anticholinergic effects than imipramine, supporting its contention with an affidavit from a professor of psychiatry and the published record of a symposium of physicians and psychiatrists concerned with the treatment of depression. Id. at 1098, 231 USPQ at 380. Both the affidavit and the symposium, however, merely noted the difference in effects between imipramine and amitriptyline without touching on the unexpectedness of the fact of or degree of difference. Id. We rejected Merck’s theory, reasoning as follows:
The core of it is that, while there are some differences in degree between the properties of amitriptyline and imipramine, the compounds expectedly have the same type of biological activity. In the absence of evidence to show that the properties of the compounds differed in such an appreciable degree that the difference was really unexpected ... appellants’ evidence was insufficient to rebut the prima facie case. The fact that amitriptyline and imipra-mine, respectively, helped some patients and not others does not appear significant. As noted by the Board, a difference in structure, although slight, would have been expected to produce some difference in activity.
Id. at 1099, 231 USPQ at 381. In short, where an applicant fails to establish the relevant baseline according to which the Board can evaluate the unexpectedness of any observed improvements, he has failed to come forward with effective rebuttal evidence. It is true that Merck does not explicitly hold that unexpectedness must be proved separately by objective evidence. Nor do the earlier cited cases. But that, I submit, is their logic. Otherwise, an ostensibly two-part inquiry collapses in effect to a one-part inquiry.
According to the majority, “an applicant [who] demonstrates substantially improved results, as Soni did here, and states that the results were unexpected ... establishes] unexpected results in the absence of evidence to the contrary.” Slip op. at 751. This new rule for assessing an applicant’s rebuttal evidence eliminates what I take to be the applicant’s burden of coming forward with objective evidence of unexpectedness and thus directly contradicts the holdings I discern from the controlling eases. Quite apart from the quick work it makes of cases such as Lindner and Merck, however, the majority’s new rule may be inherently unworkable. For example, one may well ask how large improvements in results must be before the Board must consider them to be “substantially ' improved results” such that they amount to an effective rebuttal of a prima facie case of obviousness. The majority provides no guidance on the question, despite how critical it is to the workings of the new rule.
Perhaps the majority means to say little more than that, for claims drawn to polymer compositions, a 50-fold improvement in tensile- strength after a 37% increase in the polymer’s molecular weight requires the conclusion that the claimed invention is unobvious, limiting the effect of this ease largely to the world of conductive polymer composition technologies. This reading would make the majority’s decision relatively innocuous but all the more mysterious a departure from the two-part requirement of the governing cases. Or perhaps the majority means to say, more generally, that examiners, Board members, and Federal Circuit judges will know “substantial” improvements when they see them. Disagreements among these evaluators are, of course, inevitable, and will likely be frequent. This reading, though less perplexing, would have far broader implications: unhindered by any objectively established baseline of expected improvement in the relevant art, the assessment of an applicant’s unsupported assertion that the observed degree of improvement was unexpected can flex to suit the taste of the assessor, thus destabilizing the obviousness inquiry and virtually ensuring litigation through final appeal to us in most every case of allegedly unexpected improvement. The resulting loss of objectivity and predictability bodes ill for patentability determinations.
*756Similarly perplexing is the majority’s reference to “the absence of evidence to the contrary.” Slip op. at 751. First, this eliminates the applicant’s obligation to come forward with evidence, the obligation that was the heart of the established rule. Second, it assumes that an unfair burden has been placed on the applicant. If the burden were one of persuasion, perhaps. But a mere burden of coming forward?
Conolusion
I question the desirability of the majority’s new rule for assessing an applicant’s rebuttal evidence of unexpectedness, according to which there need not be any objective evidence of unexpectedness other than the inventor’s unsupported assertion that an artisan would not have expected so great an improvement in light of the changes made. Even if desirable, such a rule is certainly not the one our cases have established. Nor does the majority merely create an exception to the settled rule; it altogether abolishes the rule in favor of a “substantially improved results” standard that will often be met. Many cases will be decided differently in the future as a consequence.
Because of dramatic improvements here, the majority sets off on a dramatic departure from the law as it stood before this case, a departure I do not think it either explains or justifies. Nor will the new rule be easy to apply or predictable in its application. If the old rule is too harsh here, then at most a narrowly defined exception could perhaps be crafted. Instead, the majority upends settled law for all cases in all arts. Like the Board, I would follow the rule of cases such as Merck and Lindner and would thus affirm the Board’s rejection of Soni’s application.

. Indeed, Soni continued to make this same concession on appeal before us, albeit implicitly. See, e.g., Reply Brief at 4-5 ("As to the results which would be expected with polymers of molecular weight less than 203,000, one of ordinary skill in the art, having learned of the surprising good results provided by a molecular weight of 203,000 as compared to a molecular weight of 148,000, and knowing that molecular weight is a continuously variable quantity, would expect that the improvements would continue to be observed as the molecular weight was reduced below 203,-*754000, by a degree which was diminishing, but nonetheless surprising.'').

. One might also note that even if, as the majority claims, the Board had "accepted] as true only that part of Soni's statement which supports the PTO's theory of patentability, while rejecting the remainder of the statement,” slip op. at 750, the Board would not thereby have violated any principle of logic. Rather, it would have been obeying principles of experience. Soni's concession was a statement against its own proprietary interest and thus more likely to be true. See, e.g., FedR.Evid. 804(b)(3) ("statement against interest” exception to the rule against hearsay). The latter part of the statement, by contrast, was completely self-serving and thus less likely to be true.

. I do not understand the requirement that the evidence be objective to require that it be numerical. In other words, quantitative tests, by the applicant or in the prior art, are not the sine qua non of objectivity; to be objective, the evidence must justify, rather than merely report, the subjective experience of surprise at an observed degree of improvement.