Court Opinion

ID: 9477931
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:34:59.047278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:07.719969
License: Public Domain

ARCHER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join the majority opinion except with respect to the majority’s “Inequitable Conduct” analysis.
The German patent (Gebrauchsmuster), No. 1,988,249 (Geb. ’249), in my view, fails to meet the threshold of materiality, even though a basis for rejection by the German examiner and by the U.S. examiner in the reexamination of the Barth ’357 patent. It is, at best, merely cumulative of prior art *1397disclosed. Geb. ’249 discloses an asymmetrical nine-sided paving stone having a single laying pattern, as shown in the majority opinion. The U.S. examiner cited Geb. ’249 as showing “slab elements or paving modules being of a single piece of concrete consisting of a head portion and a stem portion.” This much was shown by other prior art references which were before the U.S. examiner during prosecution of the Barth ’357 patent. In reversing the German examiner’s decision, the German Federal Patent Court stated that the
covering element according to [Geb. ’249] ... which also has a head and a stem, is neither symmetrically designed about a longitudinal axis nor about another axis, and already for this very reason it is not suitable for giving suggestions to the person skilled in the art through which the features characterized in the claim and directed to a covering element which is symmetrical about a longitudinal axis could have been implied.
Claim 9 claims, inter alia, a “centrally symmetrically [sic] octagon” head and the head and stem “being mirror symmetrical about said longitudinal axis.” Prior art references before the examiner during both the original examination of the Barth application and the reexamination proceeding disclosed paving stones or comparable elements having integral head and stem portions. Thus, even if the Geb. ’249 stone had been symmetrical and of ten sides instead of nine, it would only be cumulative. Litton Industrial Products, Inc. v. Solid State Systems Corp., 755 F.2d 158, 167, 225 USPQ 34, 40 (Fed.Cir.1985). Consequently, while the shape of Geb. ’249 may have been “interesting,” as the district court noted, it hardly satisfied the “but it may have been” test for materiality as the district court held. Accordingly, it is unnecessary in my view to reach the intent question of the inequitable conduct inquiry.