Court Opinion

ID: 9410064
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-07-20 13:01:14.398751+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:20:54.805346
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-1438     Document: 41    Page: 1   Filed: 07/12/2023

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                   ______________________

                IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC,
                           Appellant
                    ______________________

                         2022-1438
                   ______________________

     Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark
 Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 16/110,448.
                   ______________________

                   Decided: July 12, 2023
                   ______________________

    DEAN W. AMBURN, Amburn Law PLLC, Detroit, MI, ar-
 gued for appellant.

    PETER JOHN SAWERT, Office of the Solicitor, United
 States Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA, ar-
 gued for appellee Katherine K. Vidal. Also represented by
 DANIEL KAZHDAN, THOMAS W. KRAUSE, AMY J. NELSON,
 FARHEENA YASMEEN RASHEED.
                  ______________________

   Before PROST, LINN, and CUNNINGHAM, Circuit Judges.
 LINN, Circuit Judge.
     Appellant, Float‘N’Grill LLC (“FNG”), appeals from the
 decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) af-
 firming the Examiner’s rejections under 35 U.S.C.
 §§ 112(b) and 251 of claims 4, 8, 10–14, and 17–22 of FNG’s
 application for reissue of its U.S. Patent No. 9,771,132
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 2                                     IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC

 (“’132 patent”). Because the reissue claims in question do
 not cover “the invention disclosed in the original patent” as
 required by 35 U.S.C. § 251, we affirm that rejection and
 need not address the indefiniteness of those claims under
 35 U.S.C. § 112(b).
                      I. BACKGROUND
     The ’132 patent is directed to a float designed to sup-
 port a grill to facilitate a user grilling food while remaining
 in a body of water. The specification of the ’132 patent de-
 scribes a single embodiment, illustrated in Figures 1 and
 2, below.

      The floating apparatus 10, illustrated in Figures 1 and
 2, includes a float, 20, and a pair of grill supports, 46 and
 48, each of which has a base rod, 50, and an “inverted sub-
 stantially U-shaped upper support 52 medially attached to
 a top surface 54 of the base rod.” ’132 patent, 2:60–3:17.
 Each of the grill supports “includes a plurality of magnets
 60 disposed within the middle segment 58 of the upper sup-
 port 52 of each” grill support. Id. at 3:18–21. The specifi-
 cation specifically states: “A flattened bottom side 74 of a
 portable outdoor grill 76 is removably securable to the plu-
 rality of magnets 60 and removably disposed immediately
 atop the upper support 52 of each” of the grill supports. Id.
 at 3:35–39. No other structure besides the plurality of
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 IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC                                      3

 magnets is disclosed, suggested, or implied for removably
 securing the grill to the supports.
     The centrality of the “plurality of magnets” to the in-
 vention disclosed in the original patent is at the core of this
 case.
      Claim 1 of the original patent is narrowly tailored to
 the single embodiment disclosed in the written description
 (i.e., essentially a “picture claim”). As originally issued, the
 language of claim 1 included a recitation of the plurality of
 magnets that exactly mirrored its description in the speci-
 fication. Claim 1 was never rejected during prosecution
 and was allowed in the first office action as originally pre-
 sented. The claim reads, in relevant part, as follows:
        1. A floating apparatus for supporting a grill
     comprising. . .
             ...
              a plurality of magnets disposed within
         the middle segment of the upper support of
         each of the right grill support and the left
         grill support . . .
             ...
             wherein a flattened bottom side of a
         portable outdoor grill is removably secura-
         ble to the plurality of magnets and remov-
         ably disposed immediately atop the upper
         support of each of the right grill support
         and the left grill support.
      After the ’132 patent was issued, FNG, believing that
 it claimed less than it was entitled to claim in the original
 patent, filed a reissue application, seeking now-rejected
 claims 4, 8, 10–14, and 17–22. None of these claims contain
 the narrow “plurality of magnets” limitation. Instead, the
 claims more generically call for the removable securing of
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 a grill to the float apparatus. Representative claim 4 of the
 reissue application reads as follows:
          4. A floating grill support apparatus adapted
     to support a grill on water, the apparatus compris-
     ing:
             a float having an outer rim wherein the
         float is buoyant and adapted to float in wa-
         ter and support a grill above the water; and
             at least one base rod disposed within
         the outer rim wherein the base rod com-
         prises a grill support member;
             wherein the grill support member has
         an upper support portion;
             wherein a bottom side of the grill is re-
         movably securable and removably disposed
         immediately atop the upper support por-
         tion of the grill support member.
      The Examiner rejected claims 4, 8, 10–13 and 19–22 as
 indefinite and claims 4, 8, 10–14, and 17–22 for failure to
 satisfy the reissue standard of 35 U.S.C. § 251. Concerning
 § 251, the Examiner found that the ’132 patent disclosed “a
 single embodiment of a floating apparatus for supporting a
 grill” using a “plurality of magnets” and did not disclose
 the plurality of magnets as being “an optional feature of the
 invention.” J.A. 145–46. The Examiner also found that “it
 is prima facie apparent that the magnets are a critical ele-
 ment of the invention, as the magnets alone are responsible
 for effecting a safe and stable attachment between the
 floating apparatus and the grill.” J.A. 146.
    Referring specifically to the presented claims, the Ex-
 aminer noted that: (1) claims 4, 19, and 21 do not require
 any magnets; (2) claims 8, 20, and 22 require only a single
 magnet; and (3) claim 14 does not positively recite any
 magnets, but refers only in the preamble to a “float adapted
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 IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC                                    5

 to magnetically attach to a grill,” which the Examiner con-
 sidered to encompass an embodiment with magnets only on
 the grill not on the float. J.A. 145, 133–34. Because the
 claims in question do not require that the grill supports
 contain the “plurality of magnets” limitation considered es-
 sential to the invention as disclosed, the Examiner con-
 cluded they do not satisfy the original patent requirement
 of § 251.
     The Board sustained all the Examiner’s rejections, ex-
 cept for indefiniteness of claims 19 and 20 (though these
 claims remained rejected under 251). FNG appeals. We
 have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A).
                      II. DISCUSSION
                   A. Standard of Review
     The Board’s assessment of whether new claims pre-
 sented in a reissue application comply with 35 U.S.C. § 251
 is a question of law that we review de novo, based on un-
 derlying findings of fact reviewed for substantial evidence.
 Forum US, Inc. v. Flow Valve, LLC, 926 F.3d 1346, 1350–
 51 (Fed. Cir. 2019).
                            B. Analysis
           1. The “Original Patent” Requirement
     An applicant is free to seek an expanded scope of cov-
 erage beyond that originally sought by filing a continuation
 or divisional application during the pendency of a parent
 application and may therein include claims extending to
 the full scope of the subject matter described in the original
 specification under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a). Antares Pharma,
 Inc. v. Medac Pharma Inc., 771 F.3d 1354, 1358 (Fed. Cir.
 2014). Once a patent is granted, however, a patentee seek-
 ing to change the scope of the claims through reissue is sub-
 ject to the additional statutory limitations in 35 U.S.C.
 § 251, including, as particularly relevant here, that the re-
 issue claims must be directed to “the invention disclosed in
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 6                                    IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC

 the original patent.” Id. at 1358 (also noting the prohibi-
 tion against recapture of disclaimed subject matter); 35
 U.S.C. § 251. This has come to be known as the “original
 patent” requirement of § 251. Id.
     The blackletter standard for satisfaction of the original
 patent requirement is found in U.S. Industrial Chemicals,
 Inc. v. Carbide & Carbon Chemicals, Corp., 315 U.S. 668
 (1942). There, the original specification explained that the
 addition of water improved the efficiency of a certain reac-
 tion by limiting inefficient side reactions. Id. at 671–73.
 Nothing in the original specification indicated that water
 was optional. Id. at 673. After the patent was issued, the
 patentee discovered that water was not required for the
 most efficient reaction and obtained a reissue patent with
 a substitute specification and new claims, indicating that
 the reaction could take place with or without added water.
 Id. at 673–74.
     In its validity analysis, the Supreme Court compared
 the specifications of the original and reissue patents and
 characterized the question before it as “whether, in the
 light of the disclosures contained in the two patents, they
 are for the same invention.” Id. at 675. 1 The Court then
 went on to conclude that “they are if the reissue fully de-
 scribes and claims the very invention intended to be se-
 cured by the original patent.” Id. at 675–76. The Court
 also noted that “[i]t must appear from the face of the in-
 strument that what is covered by the reissue was intended
 to have been covered and secured by the original.” 2 Id. at

     1   The “same invention” standard is a substantively
 identical predecessor to the current “original patent” re-
 quirement under § 251. Antares, 771 F.3d at 1359–61.
     2   We have rejected the gloss on this standard that
 depends upon the “intent” of the patentee. Antares, 771
 F.3d at 1361–62 (describing prior Federal Circuit deci-
 sions).
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 IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC                                   7

 676. Because the original specification and claims treated
 the voluntary introduction of water as “a necessary step” in
 the process, and because on the face of the two patents the
 introduction of water was “a step not designated as op-
 tional or desirable but described and claimed as an integral
 part of the whole operation,” the Supreme Court concluded
 that the omitted step of introducing water was “essential
 in the original patent,” and its absence in the reissue
 claims rendered those claims invalid as directed to a differ-
 ent invention than originally disclosed. Id. at 676–77. The
 Court further explained that a reissue claim does not meet
 the requirements of § 251 merely because the newly
 claimed invention “might have been claimed in the original
 patent because it was suggested or indicated in the specifi-
 cation.” Id. at 676. The Court also noted that it was of no
 moment that “the result attained [in the reissue patent] is
 the same as that brought about by following the process
 claimed in the original patent.” Id. at 678.
      We have applied these general principles in a number
 of cases in which protection was sought by way of reissue
 for different aspects of inventions not claimed in original
 patents. In Antares, the original patent described jet injec-
 tor devices for self-delivery of pharmaceuticals and speci-
 fied the depth to which the needle plunges, the force at
 which the medicant is expelled, and the gauge of the nee-
 dle. 771 F.3d at 1356. All of the original claims were lim-
 ited to the disclosed jet injector device. Id. at 1362–63. On
 reissue, the patentee sought coverage for various safety
 features of injection devices, such as a push button with a
 lock. Id. We held that “[a]lthough safety features were
 mentioned in the specification, they were never described
 separately from the jet injector, nor were the particular
 combinations of safety features claimed on reissue ever dis-
 closed in the specification.” Id. at 1363. We further held
 that the cursory “suggestion” that a push button safety fea-
 ture could be used in the original specification was not suf-
 ficient to satisfy § 251, because the specification did not
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 8                                     IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC

 “disclose, in an explicit and unequivocal manner, the par-
 ticular combinations of safety features claimed on reissue,
 separate from the jet injection invention.” Id. (citing U.S.
 Indus. Chem., 315 U.S. at 676).
      In Peters, the invention claimed in the original patent
 was a display device having front and back walls separated
 by support elements, each having a metal tip along its
 length with a tapered cross-section. 723 F.2d 891, 92 (Fed.
 Cir. 1983). The specification described the function of the
 metal tips as securing the support elements in place and
 preventing lateral movement of the channels defined by
 the support elements.         See generally U.S. Pat. No.
 4,145,633. Peters’ reissue patent claims omitted the ta-
 pered shape of the metal tip limitation. Peters, 723 F.2d at
 892–93. The Board rejected the reissue claims under § 251
 concluding that “the claims are unsupported by Peters’
 original disclosure.” Id. at 893. This court reversed. We
 explained that nothing in the original specification sug-
 gested that the tapered shape of the tips was “essential or
 critical to either the operation or patentability of the inven-
 tion.” Id. at 893–94. We reached that conclusion because:
 (1) the tapering limitation was not used to overcome any
 prior art; and (2) “[m]ost importantly, one skilled in the art
 would readily understand that in practicing the invention
 it is unimportant whether the tips are tapered.” Id. at 893.
 We cautioned that the Board should not improperly confine
 the invention to the specific embodiments disclosed in the
 original patent or to require the original specification to
 disclose each of the differing tip shapes in order to allow
 the broadening reissue claims, where “the overall disclo-
 sure reasonably conveys to one skilled in the art that the
 inventor had possession of the broad invention at the time
 the original application was filed.” Id. at 894.
     In Forum, original claims were directed to a “workpiece
 machining implement” that required a “plurality of arbors
 supported by the body member” so as to allow the member
 to rotate along different axes. 926 F.3d at 1349. The
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 IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC                                    9

 specification of the original patent contained a number of
 embodiments, each having multiple arbors. The disclosure
 explained the advantage of multiple arbors as allowing for
 rapid and accurate machining by changing from one arbor
 to another. Id. On reissue, the patentee sought to broaden
 the claims to remove the “plurality of arbors” limitation in
 favor of a “support that is selectively positionable.” Id. at
 1350. We held that the reissue claims were invalid for fail-
 ure to satisfy the original patent requirement, explaining
 that “nowhere do the written description or drawings dis-
 close that arbors are an optional feature of the invention.”
 Id. at 1352.
     In each of these cases, the focus of the § 251 analysis
 was on the invention disclosed in the original patent and
 whether that disclosure, on its face, explicitly and unequiv-
 ocally described the invention as recited in the reissue
 claims. As relevant to this appeal, we hold that reissue
 claims broadening a limitation to cover undisclosed alter-
 natives to a particular feature appearing from the face of
 the original specification to be a necessary, critical, or es-
 sential part of the invention, do not meet the original pa-
 tent requirement of § 251.
             2. The Reissue Claims in Question
      We agree with the Board that the reissue claims in this
 case are not directed to the invention disclosed in the orig-
 inal patent and, therefore, do not meet the original patent
 requirement of § 251. Here, the original specification de-
 scribes a single embodiment of the invention characterized
 as a float apparatus having a grill support including a plu-
 rality of magnets for safely and removably securing the
 grill to the float. The plurality of magnets component of
 the grill support structure, which has been eliminated in
 the reissue claims, is the only disclosed component for re-
 movably securing the grill to the support. It is not de-
 scribed in the original patent disclosure as optional,
 representative of removable fasteners generally, or
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 10                                   IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC

 exemplary of a broader invention. Nor does the original
 disclosure include examples of alternative components or
 arrangements that might perform the functions of or oper-
 ate in a similar manner to the disclosed plurality of mag-
 nets.
      As the Board found, the plurality of magnets compo-
 nent of the support structure here is an essential part of
 the invention as it is the only disclosed structure for per-
 forming the necessary task of removably and safely secur-
 ing the grill to the float apparatus. This conclusion is
 bolstered by the immutable fact that magnets are unique
 in facilitating the attachment of members merely by con-
 tact, as contrasted to nuts and bolts and other conventional
 fasteners that typically require multiple parts and more
 than one hand to assemble. Not only does the specification
 lack any disclosure or suggestion of an alternative fastener,
 but the one fastener disclosed is unlike any alternative that
 might even be considered. Here, the specification contains
 nothing to suggest to one of ordinary skill in the art that
 alternative mechanisms may be used in place of the plural-
 ity of magnets or that the plurality of magnets structure is
 a stand-in for a broader category of removable fasteners.
 To the contrary, the plurality of magnets is the only mech-
 anism disclosed to fulfill the necessary functions of remov-
 ably and safely securing the grill to the float.
     This omission of the plurality of magnets here is simi-
 lar to the omission of water in U.S. Industrial Chemicals
 and the omission of the plurality of arbors in Forum. In
 both cases, nothing in the original specifications clearly
 and unequivocally disclosed any alternative to perform the
 functions of the omitted element. Rather, just as the added
 water in U.S. Industrial Chemicals was “not designated as
 optional or desirable but described and claimed as an inte-
 gral part of the whole operation,” 315 U.S. at 677, and the
 specification in Forum “[did] not disclose an arbor-less em-
 bodiment of the invention,” 926 F.3d at 1352, the plurality
 of magnets in FNG’s specification was described in
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 IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC                                   11

 definitional and necessary terms, ’132 Patent at 3:18–21
 (“The floating apparatus for supporting a grill 10 further
 includes a plurality of magnets 60 disposed within the mid-
 dle segment 58 of the upper support[s]”); id. at 2:15–18
 (similar); id. at 2:31–34 (“A flattened bottom side of a port-
 able outdoor grill is removably securable to the plurality of
 magnets”); id. at 1:22–38 (“[W]hat has been needed is a plu-
 rality of magnets disposed within a middle segment of the
 upper support[s] . . . . A portable outdoor grill is removably
 securable to the plurality of magnets”).
      FNG argues that the plurality of magnets is simply a
 non-essential embodiment of the original patent, like the
 tapering of the metal tips in Peters. FNG argues that the
 disclosure in the original patent of removably securing the
 grill to the grill supports with a plurality of magnets is
 enough to support broadened reissue claims that recite re-
 movably securing the grill to the grill supports more gen-
 erally, because one of ordinary skill in the art “would
 understand that it is unimportant how the floating appa-
 ratus supports the grill.” Appellant’s Opening Br. at 22–
 23 (noting disclosure in the prior art showing other means
 of securing a grill to a float).
     We disagree. First, an express statement of criticality
 of an element in the original specification is not a prereq-
 uisite for a determination that that element is essential to
 the invention claimed in the original patent. There was no
 such statement of criticality of the arbors in Forum or the
 added water in U.S. Industrial Chemicals. Our court and
 the Supreme Court in those cases held that the limitations
 were critical because the inventions were described exclu-
 sively with the limitations later omitted, and an analysis
 of the relationship of those limitations to the functionality
 and disclosure of the original invention revealed their es-
 sential and critical nature. The same analysis reveals the
 essential and critical nature of the plurality of magnets
 here.
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 12                                   IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC

      Second, whether ordinary artisans could replace the
 disclosed magnet mechanism with some other undisclosed
 mechanism to achieve a similar removably securable func-
 tionality, is inapposite. The result of the procedure claimed
 in U.S. Industrial Chemicals was the same whether water
 was added or not, 315 U.S. at 677. There, the Supreme
 Court explained that “even though the result attained is
 the same as that brought about by following the process
 claimed in the original patent,” the omission “renders the
 reissue void,” id. at 678. See also Forum, 926 F.3d at 1352
 (“Even if a person of ordinary skill in the art would under-
 stand that the newly claimed, arbor-less invention would
 be possible, that is insufficient to comply with the standard
 set forth in Industrial Chemicals and Antares.”).
     Third, the plurality of magnets component here is not
 like the tapered tips in Peters. The omitted tapering limi-
 tation in Peters had no described functional role and its
 configuration was superficial at best. The original specifi-
 cation in Peters comprehensively described the metal tips
 many times by characteristics and functions independent
 of their tapering. U.S. Pat. No. 4,145,633 at 1:50–65 (tips
 should be as thin as possible so as not to obscure too much
 of the screen that they support); id. at 2:13–21 (tips must
 be prevented from transverse movement to maintain their
 orientation to the support wall); id. at 3:17–31 (tips have a
 “plurality of feet” for support and “thin, flexible web por-
 tions” to allow longitudinal movement); id. at 3:32–4:1 (tips
 include a retainer to permit longitudinal movement and a
 spring member to prevent lateral movement); id. at 4:1–3
 (tips are compressed between two walls by atmospheric
 pressure). The tapering characteristic, however, was never
 given functional importance. See Peters, 723 F.2d at 894
 (“The teaching of the patent . . . is not affected by whether
 the metal tips are tapered.”). This was the context for our
 statement in Peters that “nothing in the original disclo-
 sures indicates or suggests that the tapered shape of the
 tips was essential or critical to either the operation or
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 IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC                                 13

 patentability of the invention.” 723 F.2d at 893–94. The
 plurality of magnets limitation here, on the other hand, is
 in no way superficial, but is the one disclosed embodiment
 that fulfils the claimed removably securing function.
      FNG repeatedly argues that because the reissue claims
 are broad enough to generically cover a float apparatus
 having a plurality of magnets, the original patent require-
 ment of § 251 is met. What FNG fails to appreciate is that
 it is precisely because the reissue claims go beyond and are
 not limited to the plurality of magnets essential to the in-
 vention disclosed in the original patent that they fail to
 meet the requirement of § 251.
      Finally, FNG argues that Revolution Eyewear v. Aspex
 Eyewear, Inc., 563 F.3d 1358, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2009) and In
 re Rasmussen, 650 F.2d 1212, 1215–16 (CCPA 1981) hold
 that if the original specification would have supported the
 reissue claim omitting the limitation, then the original pa-
 tent requirement is satisfied. FNG is incorrect. In Revolu-
 tion Eyewear, the court found that the original patent was
 satisfied “[b]ecause [it had just] held that the written de-
 scription requirement [was] satisfied.” Id. at 1367. In An-
 tares, 771 F.3d at 1362 & n. 8, we explained that this
 analysis in Revolution Eyewear was a product of the par-
 ties’ arguments and not a holding that satisfaction of writ-
 ten description therefore satisfies the original patent
 requirement. FNG’s reliance on In re Rasmussen fares no
 better; that case too was analyzed in the context of written
 description and new matter, not the original patent re-
 quirement of § 251 as an independent basis for unpatenta-
 bility of the reissue claims. In re Rasmussen, 650 F.3d at
 1215–16.
                     III. CONCLUSION
     For the foregoing reasons, the Board did not err in af-
 firming the rejection of reissue claims 4, 8, 10–14, and 17–
 22 for failure to satisfy the original patent requirement of
 § 251. Because this resolves the question of validity of all
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 14                                  IN RE: FLOAT'N'GRILL LLC

 the claims at issue on appeal, we need not and do not reach
 the issue of indefiniteness.
                       AFFIRMED