Court Opinion

ID: 9950962
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-15 14:00:51.951259+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:35:35.665283
License: Public Domain

Case: 23-1151    Document: 53    Page: 1   Filed: 03/15/2024

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                  ______________________

   SHARKNINJA OPERATING LLC, SHARKNINJA
     MANAGEMENT LLC, SHARKNINJA SALES
                COMPANY,
                 Appellants

                            v.

                IROBOT CORPORATION,
                         Appellee
                  ______________________

                        2023-1151
                  ______________________

     Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark
 Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. IPR2021-
 00545.
                  ______________________

                 Decided: March 15, 2024
                 ______________________

     DANIEL C. TUCKER, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow,
 Garrett & Dunner, LLP, Reston, VA, argued for appellants.
 Also represented by ERIKA ARNER, Washington, DC;
 BENJAMIN AARON SAIDMAN, Atlanta, GA.

    JOHN C. O'QUINN, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Washington,
 DC, argued for appellee. Also represented by WILLIAM H.
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 2         SHARKNINJA OPERATING LLC v. IROBOT CORPORATION

 BURGESS, GREGG LOCASCIO, SEAN M. MCELDOWNEY, TERA
 JO STONE.
               ______________________

     Before LOURIE, HUGHES, and STARK, Circuit Judges.
 LOURIE, Circuit Judge.
     SharkNinja Operating LLC, SharkNinja Management
 LLC, and SharkNinja Sales Company (“SharkNinja”) ap-
 peal from a final written decision of the U.S. Patent and
 Trademark Office Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the
 Board”) holding that claims 24, 25, 32−34, 36, 37, 55, 56,
 and 62 of U.S. Patent 7,571,511 had not been shown to
 have been unpatentable as obvious in view of the asserted
 prior art. SharkNinja Operating LLC v. iRobot Corp., No.
 IPR2021-00545, 2022 WL 4111189 (P.T.A.B. Sept. 6, 2022)
 (“Decision”). For the following reasons, we affirm.
                        BACKGROUND
     This appeal pertains to an inter partes review (“IPR”)
 in which SharkNinja challenged various claims of the ’511
 patent directed to an autonomous floor-cleaning robot vac-
 uum. Independent claim 24 is presented below:
        24. A self-propelled floor-cleaning robot com-
        prising
        a housing defining a round housing perime-
        ter;
        a powered primary brush assembly disposed
        within the round housing perimeter and posi-
        tioned to engage a floor surface;
        a powered side brush extending beyond the
        round housing perimeter and positioned to
        brush floor surface debris from beyond the
        round housing perimeter;
        an obstacle detector responsive to obstacles
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 SHARKNINJA OPERATING LLC v. IROBOT CORPORATION            3

        encountered by the robot; and
        a control circuit in electrical communication
        with the motor drive and configured to control
        the motor drive to maneuver the robot about
        detected obstacles across the floor surface
        during a floor-cleaning operation.
 ’511 patent, col. 17 ll. 50–63 (emphases added).
     Independent claim 55 similarly recites a self-propelled
 floor-cleaning robot comprising “a cleaning head disposed
 within the round housing perimeter” and “a powered rotat-
 ing side brush extending beyond the round housing perim-
 eter.” Id. col. 20 ll. 5–29. Only the primary brush assembly
 and cleaning head limitations are at issue in this appeal;
 thus, the patentability of the corresponding dependent
 claims rests on the fate of independent claims 24 and 55.
     In its petition, SharkNinja raised multiple grounds of
 invalidity under 35 U.S.C. § 103 based on Bisset 1 in view
 of various additional references including Toyoda. 2 Bisset
 describes a self-propelled floor-cleaning robot comprising
 wheels, a controller, and a housing, as well as a cleaning
 head comprising a brush. Decision at *4; J.A. 2001−04,
 2018−22. Bisset’s cleaning head, however, extends beyond
 the perimeter of the robot’s housing, yielding a protuber-
 ance described as being useful for cleaning edges and cor-
 ners.     See J.A. 2003 (“[T]he cleaner head 122 is
 asymmetrically mounted on the chassis 102 so that one
 side of the cleaner head 122 protrudes beyond the general
 circumference of the chassis 102. This allows the cleaner
 100 to clean up to the edge of a room on the side of the
 cleaner 100 on which the cleaner head 122 protrudes.”),

    1   International Patent Application Publication
 2000/38026; J.A. 1997.
    2 Japanese Patent Application Publication 2000-

 353014 A, published December 19, 2000; J.A. 2046.
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 4         SHARKNINJA OPERATING LLC v. IROBOT CORPORATION

 2022 (FIGS. 5A & 5B). Toyoda teaches a self-propelled
 cleaning robot that comprises side brushes. Decision at *4;
 J.A. 2049, 2082.
     The Board construed claims 24 and 55 to require that
 their respective primary brush assembly and cleaning head
 be “entirely within” the housing perimeter, Decision at *3–
 4, and found that Bisset’s robot did not meet that limita-
 tion, id. at *7−8. The Board further held that SharkNinja
 had not met its burden to establish that a person of ordi-
 nary skill in the art would have had a motivation to rede-
 sign the Bisset structure such that its cleaning head no
 longer protruded beyond the housing perimeter. Id. at *7–
 8. The Board thus concluded that SharkNinja had failed
 to establish that the combination of Bisset and Toyoda ren-
 dered independent claims 24 and 55, as well as the claims
 that depend therefrom, obvious. Id.
    SharkNinja appealed. We have jurisdiction under
 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A) and 35 U.S.C. § 141(c).
                        DISCUSSION
     We review the Board’s legal determinations de novo, In
 re Elsner, 381 F.3d 1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir. 2004), and the
 Board’s factual findings for substantial evidence, In re
 Gartside, 203 F.3d 1305, 1316 (Fed. Cir. 2000). A finding
 is supported by substantial evidence if a reasonable mind
 might accept the evidence as adequate to support the find-
 ing. Consol. Edison Co. v. NLRB, 305 U.S. 197, 229 (1938).
     SharkNinja argues that the Board erred in construing
 claim 24’s “primary brush assembly disposed within the
 round housing perimeter” and claim 55’s “cleaning head
 disposed within the round housing perimeter” to require
 that those structures be “entirely within” the round hous-
 ing perimeter. It further argues that the Board erred in
 finding that it failed to establish a motivation to modify
 Bisset such that the cleaning head would have been posi-
 tioned entirely within the housing perimeter. We address
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 SHARKNINJA OPERATING LLC v. IROBOT CORPORATION                5

 each argument in turn.
     Claim construction is ultimately a question of law that
 we review de novo. Intel Corp. v. Qualcomm Inc., 21 F.4th
 801, 808 (Fed. Cir. 2021). “It is a ‘bedrock principle’ of pa-
 tent law that ‘the claims of a patent define the invention[,]
 which the patentee is entitled . . . to exclude’” others from
 practicing. Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1312
 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (quoting Innova/Pure Water, Inc. v. Safari
 Water Filtration Sys., Inc., 381 F.3d 1111, 1115 (Fed. Cir.
 2004)); Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc., 90 F.3d 1576,
 1582 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (“[W]e look to the words of the claims
 themselves . . . to define the scope of the patented inven-
 tion.”).
     We begin with the language of the claims, which ex-
 pressly require that the primary brush assembly and
 cleaning head be “within” the housing perimeter. The term
 “within” establishes a relationship between the primary
 brush assembly, or alternatively, the cleaning head, and
 the boundary structure of the housing perimeter. See ’511
 patent, col. 17 ll. 52–54; id. col. 20 ll. 17–18. In contrast, a
 different limitation reciting a side brush establishes a re-
 lationship between that side brush and the housing perim-
 eter such that the side brush “extend[s] beyond the housing
 perimeter.” See id. col. 17 ll. 55–57; see also id. col. 20 ll.
 19−25. Given that the claims expressly contemplate that
 the side brush “extend[s] beyond” the housing perimeter,
 while the primary brush assembly and cleaning head exist
 “within” the perimeter, the plain language of the claims
 supports that the primary brush assembly and cleaning
 head be located entirely within the housing perimeter.
     The specification similarly describes how the primary
 brush assembly is “mounted in the deck 82 recess,” which
 is consistently depicted as existing entirely within the
 housing perimeter. See ’511 patent, col. 12 ll. 29−38; id.
 FIGS. 3A−3Β, 6−7Β. That placement of the primary brush
 assembly, or cleaning head, allows for macroscopic and
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 6         SHARKNINJA OPERATING LLC v. IROBOT CORPORATION

 microscopic particulates to be directed into the removable
 dust cartridge, which is also consistently depicted as being
 entirely within the round housing perimeter of the robot.
 Id. col. 12 ll. 38−53. In contrast, the specification repeat-
 edly describes how the side brush “direct[s] particulates
 outside the envelope of the robot into the self-adjustable
 cleaning head [or primary brush assembly] subsystem.”
 See ’511 patent, col. 1 ll. 25−34 (emphasis added); see also
 id. col. 8 ll. 24−28, 58−65 (describing how the side brush
 arms “extend beyond the outer periphery of the autono-
 mous floor-cleaning robot” (emphasis added)). Each of
 those disclosures naturally aligns with the adopted “en-
 tirely within” construction.
     SharkNinja suggests that such a construction improp-
 erly imports the word “entirely” from the disclosed embod-
 iments into the claims. Appellants’ Br. at 26−28. We
 disagree, as the claim construction arises from the claim
 language itself. That it is consistent with the embodiments
 and other disclosures in the specification does not mean it
 improperly imports limitations from the specification. Ra-
 ther, it supports our conclusion that the construction is cor-
 rect. See Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1316 (“The construction that
 stays true to the claim language and most naturally aligns
 with the patent’s description of the invention will be, in the
 end, the correct construction.”).
     We next turn to SharkNinja’s argument that, even if
 the “entirely within” construction was correct, the Board
 abused its discretion by failing to address all arguments
 raised in the petition, and its resulting conclusion that
 SharkNinja failed to establish a motivation to alter Bisset
 such that its cleaning head fit entirely within the housing
 perimeter was not supported by substantial evidence. See
 Appellants’ Br. at 36−47; Decision at *7−8. We review the
 Board’s assessment of the arguments set forth in a petition
 for abuse of discretion. Corephotonics, Ltd. v. Apple Inc.,
 84 F.4th 990, 1002−03 (Fed. Cir. 2023). The Board’s moti-
 vation to combine determinations are fact findings that we
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 SHARKNINJA OPERATING LLC v. IROBOT CORPORATION             7

 review for substantial evidence.     Gartside, 203 F.3d at
 1316.
      The entirety of SharkNinja’s argument regarding a mo-
 tivation to modify Bisset’s cleaning head in the context of
 claims 24 and 55 is the assertion that “Petitioners showed
 for claim 1 in Section VII.E.6” that such modification would
 have been obvious. J.A. 1064 (claim 24), 1075 (claim 55).
 Section VII.E.6 of the petition describes the protrusion of
 Bisset’s cleaning head as “no longer be necessary for edge
 cleaning” following the addition of a side brush to the robot
 structure. Id. at 1039. We agree with the Board that “it is
 not enough to simply state that the protruding brush bar
 is ‘unnecessary,’” rather, “a skilled artisan would need
 some reason to change the brush bar” of Bisset to be en-
 tirely within the housing perimeter. See Decision at *8.
     Section VII.E.6 of the petition next provides a single
 sentence asserting that “with Bisset’s protruding configu-
 ration, debris in the cleaning path will disadvantageously
 contact wheels before they can be cleaned by the brush
 bar.” J.A. 1039 (italics in original). That sentence cites an
 expert declaration, which repeats the same assertion, but
 otherwise does not cite anything in the prior art for sup-
 port. See J.A. 1903−04. It was not error for the Board to
 be unpersuaded by this one sentence argument.
     The petition otherwise merely refers to the placement
 of Bisset’s protruding cleaning head as “simply a design
 choice.” The Board’s finding that this does not establish a
 sufficient motivation to modify the intentionally protrud-
 ing structure in Bisset is supported by substantial evi-
 dence. See Decision at *8.
     In view of the above, we find the Board’s conclusion
 that SharkNinja failed to establish that a person of ordi-
 nary skill in the art would have been motivated to redesign
 Bisset such that its cleaning head fit entirely within the
 housing perimeter was supported by substantial evidence.
 Furthermore, we conclude that the Board adequately
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 8         SHARKNINJA OPERATING LLC v. IROBOT CORPORATION

 considered the arguments raised in the petition and thus
 did not abuse its discretion.
                        CONCLUSION
     We have considered SharkNinja’s remaining argu-
 ments and do not find them persuasive. For the foregoing
 reasons, we affirm the Board’s final written decision hold-
 ing that claims 24, 25, 32−34, 36, 37, 55, 56, and 62 of the
 ’511 patent were not shown to have been unpatentable in
 view of the asserted prior art.
                        AFFIRMED