What’s a tool? What is functionality? Network monitoring claim held patent-eligible in split opinion
WHDA Blogging Team | October 29, 2019
SRI International, Inc., v. Cisco Systems, Inc.
March 20, 2019
Before Lourie, O’Malley, and Stoll. Opinion by Stoll. Dissenting opinion by Lourie.
Summary
The CAFC affirmed a district court decision holding that claims related to network security monitoring are patent-eligible. In the 2-1 opinion, the CAFC held that all of the asserted claims are patent eligible under §101 as not “directed to” an abstract idea under the first step of the Alice test, because the claims focus on an improvement in the functionality of computers and computer network technology.
The CAFC also affirmed the district court’s construction of the claim term “network traffic data,” summary judgment of no anticipation, and award of ongoing royalties but willful infringement and attorneys’ fees issues were vacated and remanded.
This presentation only addresses the issue of patent eligibility.
Details
SRI International, Inc. (“SRI”) sued Cisco Systems, Inc. (“Cisco”) for infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,711,615 (‘615 patent) and 6,484,203 (‘203 patent). The ‘615 patent is a continuation of the ‘203 patent. The patents relate to network security by using network monitors to analyze the data on the network and generating and integrating reports of suspicious activity.
SRI proposed claim 1 of the ‘615 patent as representative claim while Cisco proposed claim 1 of the ‘203 patent. The CAFC noted that the claims are substantially similar, the difference in the list of categories of data not being material to any issue on appeal, and adopted claim 1 of ‘615 patent as the representative claim.
Claim 1 of the ‘615 patent:
1. A computer-automated method of hierarchical event monitoring and analysis within an enterprise network comprising:
deploying a plurality of network monitors in the enterprise network;
detecting, by the network monitors, suspicious network activity based on analysis of network traffic data selected from one or more of the following categories: {network packet data transfer commands, network packet data transfer errors, network packet data volume, network connection requests, network connection denials, error codes included in a network packet, network connection acknowledgements, and network packets indicative of well-known network-service protocols};
generating, by the monitors, reports of said suspicious activity; and
automatically receiving and integrating the reports of suspicious activity, by one or more hierarchical monitors.
As a preliminary matter, the CAFC noted that SRI spent considerable investment on network intrusion detection and developed the Event Monitoring Enabling Response or Anomalous Live Disturbances (“EMERALD”) project prior to the filing of the patents. In addition, the CAFC also noted that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, which helped fund the project, called it a “gem in the world of cyber defense” and “‘a quantum leap improvement over’ previous technology.”
As to the issue of patent eligibility, the District Court held that the claims do more than merely recite the performance of a known business practice on the Internet and are better understood as being necessarily rooted in computer technology in order to solve a specific problem in the realm of computer networks. The CAFC agreed.
The CAFC explained that by the recitation of detecting an activity, receiving and integrating the reports, the claim does more than just the normal, expected operation of a conventional computer network. The CAFC specifically described the technological improvement as “a network defense system that monitors network traffic in real-time to automatically detect large-scale attacks,” with reference to Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp.
In addition, the CAFC noted that the specification provided an explanation of both the technological problem – the network becomes more valuable when the technology become more interoperable and integrated but also makes it more vulnerable to attack – and the technological solution, by providing “a framework for the recognition of more global threats to interdomain connectivity, including coordinated attempts to infiltrate or destroy connectivity across an entire network enterprise.” Unfortunately, here, the CAFC simply cited the specification of the SRI patent but did not provide any details regarding how the specification presents the technological solution in relation to the claim language.
When arguing that the claims are directed to an abstract idea, Cisco had raised three main arguments, which the CAFC addressed in turn:
1. the claims are “directed to generic steps required to collect and analyze data,” therefore, “the claims are analogous to those in Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A.” in which the claims were simply using the computers as tools. Thus, “the claims are directed to an abstract idea”;
2. “the invention does not involve an improvement to computer functionality itself”; and
3. the claims correspond generally to what people can “go through in their minds”.
Regarding Cisco’s first argument, the CAFC disagreed with Cisco’s view that the SRI patent claims are similar to the claims in Electric Power Group,[i] because the claimed invention in Electric Power Group was only “using computers as tools to solve a power grid problem.” The CAFC emphasized that the claims are similar to the claims in DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, which were “directed to more than merely requiring a computer network operating in is normal, expected manner.”
Next, in rejecting Cisco’s second argument, the CAFC asserted that the representative claim is not about “automating a conventional idea on a computer” but “improv[ing] the technical functioning of the computer and computer networks by reciting a specific technique for improving computer network security.”
The CAFC also rejected Cisco’s third argument that the claims recite a mental process, by countering that “the human mind is not equipped to detect suspicious activity by using network monitors and analyzing network packets.”
In conclusion, the CAFC held that the claims at issue are not “directed to” an abstract idea under step one of Alice, because the claims are not just using the computer as a tool to analyze data from multiple sources to detect suspicious activity. Instead, the claims define using network monitors to detect suspicious network activity based on analysis of network traffic data, generating reports of that suspicious activity, and integrating those reports using hierarchical monitors to identify hackers and potential intruders. Thus, the claims provide an improvement in the functionality of computers and computer networks, and, therefore, the claims are patent eligible.
Dissent
Dissenting Judge Lourie thought that the claims of the SRI patent were similar to the claims in Electric Power Group because, in his view, the SRI claims “recite nothing more than deploying network monitors, detecting suspicious network activity, and generating and handling reports.” Judge Lourie noted that in Electric Power Group, the claims that were held patent-ineligible recited “receiving data,” “detecting and analyzing events in real time,” “displaying the event analysis results and diagnoses of events,” “accumulating and updating measurements,” and “deriving a composite indicator of reliability.”
Further, he pointed out that the portions of the SRI specification to which the majority refers “only recites results, not means for accomplishing them,” and that the SRI claims as written “do not recite a specific way of enabling a computer to monitor network activity.” Since he considered that the SRI claims do not provide any specifics as to how the steps are performed and show no improvement to computer technology, he would have held that the claims were directed to an abstract idea.
Takeaway
As this decision shows, there is much uncertainty regarding whether a claim would be treated as patent-eligible or not under the Alice test. It seems that a different set of judges might have easily sided with Judge Lourie’s analysis and invalidated the claims.
In the
meantime, the explanations and details given in the patent description
regarding the technical problem solved by the invention, instead of referring
to generic computer or network components, helped these claims survive the
patent-eligibility challenge.
[i] Claim 12 of U.S. Patent 8,401,701 at issue in Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A.:
12. A method of detecting events on an interconnected electric power grid in real time over a wide area and automatically analyzing the events on the interconnected electric power grid, the method comprising:
receiving a plurality of data streams, each of the data streams comprising sub-second, time stamped synchronized phasor measurements wherein the measurements in each stream are collected in real time at geographically distinct points over the wide area of the interconnected electric power grid, the wide area comprising at least two elements from among control areas, transmission companies, utilities, regional reliability coordinators, and reliability jurisdictions;
receiving data from other power system data sources, the other power system data sources comprising at least one of transmission maps, power plant locations, EMS/SCADA systems;
receiving data from a plurality of non-grid data sources;
detecting and analyzing events in real-time from the plurality of data streams from the wide area based on at least one of limits, sensitivities and rates of change for one or more measurements from the data streams and dynamic stability metrics derived from analysis of the measurements from the data streams including at least one of frequency instability, voltages, power flows, phase angles, damping, and oscillation modes, derived from the phasor measurements and the other power system data sources in which the metrics are indicative of events, grid stress, and/or grid instability, over the wide area;
displaying the event analysis results and diagnoses of events and associated ones of the metrics from different categories of data and the derived metrics in visuals, tables, charts, or combinations thereof, the data comprising at least one of monitoring data, tracking data, historical data, prediction data, and summary data;
displaying concurrent visualization of measurements from the data streams and the dynamic stability metrics directed to the wide area of the interconnected electric power grid;
accumulating and updating the measurements from the data streams and the dynamic stability metrics, grid data, and non-grid data in real time as to wide area and local area portions of the interconnected electric power grid; and
deriving a composite indicator of reliability that is an indicator of power grid vulnerability and is derived from a combination of one or more real time measurements or computations of measurements from the data streams and the dynamic stability metrics covering the wide area as well as non-power grid data received from the non-grid data source.
[1] Claim 12 of U.S. Patent 8,401,701 at issue in Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A.:
12. A method of detecting events on an interconnected electric power grid in real time over a wide area and automatically analyzing the events on the interconnected electric power grid, the method comprising:
receiving a plurality of data streams, each of the data streams comprising sub-second, time stamped synchronized phasor measurements wherein the measurements in each stream are collected in real time at geographically distinct points over the wide area of the interconnected electric power grid, the wide area comprising at least two elements from among control areas, transmission companies, utilities, regional reliability coordinators, and reliability jurisdictions;
receiving data from other power system data sources, the other power system data sources comprising at least one of transmission maps, power plant locations, EMS/SCADA systems;
receiving data from a plurality of non-grid data sources;
detecting and analyzing events in real-time from the plurality of data streams from the wide area based on at least one of limits, sensitivities and rates of change for one or more measurements from the data streams and dynamic stability metrics derived from analysis of the measurements from the data streams including at least one of frequency instability, voltages, power flows, phase angles, damping, and oscillation modes, derived from the phasor measurements and the other power system data sources in which the metrics are indicative of events, grid stress, and/or grid instability, over the wide area;
displaying the event analysis results and diagnoses of events and associated ones of the metrics from different categories of data and the derived metrics in visuals, tables, charts, or combinations thereof, the data comprising at least one of monitoring data, tracking data, historical data, prediction data, and summary data;
displaying concurrent visualization of measurements from the data streams and the dynamic stability metrics directed to the wide area of the interconnected electric power grid;
accumulating and updating the measurements from the data streams and the dynamic stability metrics, grid data, and non-grid data in real time as to wide area and local area portions of the interconnected electric power grid; and
deriving a composite indicator of reliability that is an indicator of power grid vulnerability and is derived from a combination of one or more real time measurements or computations of measurements from the data streams and the dynamic stability metrics covering the wide area as well as non-power grid data received from the non-grid data source.
The limitations of a “wherein” clause
Adele Critchley | October 15, 2019
Allergan Sales, LLC v. Sandoz, Inc., No. 2018-2207
August 29, 2019
Prost, Newman and Wallach. Opinion by Wallach
Summary
Appellees (Allergan hereon in) sued Appellants (Sandoz hereon in) asserting that their Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) for a generic version of Allergan’s ophthalmic drug (Combigan®) infringed on their U.S. Patent Nos. 9,770,453: 9,907,801: 9,907,802. The District Court found limiting a number of “wherein” clauses in the Patents’ and granted Allergan’s motion for Preliminary Injection. Sandoz appealed. CAFC affirmed.
As an exemplary claim, independent claim 1 of the ‘453 patent is as follows:
A method of treating a patient with glaucoma or ocular hypertension comprising topically administering twice daily to an affected eye a single composition comprising 0.2% w/v brimonidine tartrate and 0.68% w/v timolol maleate,
wherein the method is as effective as the administration of 0.2% w/v brimonidine tartrate monotherapy three times per day and
wherein the method reduces the incidence of one o[r] more adverse events selected from the group consisting of conjunctival hyperemia, oral dryness, eye pruritus, allergic conjunctivitis, foreign body sensation, conjunctival folliculosis, and somnolence when compared to the administration of 0.2% w/v brimonidine tartrate monotherapy three times daily.
The specifications contained a clinical study, referred to as Example II, and it is the results thereof that are reflected in “the disputed “wherein” clauses (i.e., the efficacy and safety of the claimed combination).
Allergan argued that the “wherein” clauses were limiting, whereas Sandoz argued that the “wherein” clauses were not. Specifically, Sandoz argued that the “wherein” clauses “merely state the intended results” and so are not “material to patentability.” Sandoz argued that the only positive limitation in the claim[s] is the administering step. Sandoz relied upon previous cases to argue that “…whereby [or wherein] clause in a method claim is not given weight when it simply expresses the intended result of a process step positively recited.”); Bristol–Myers Squibb Co. v. Ben Venue Labs., Inc., 246 F.3d 1368, 1376 (Fed. Cir. 2001).
The District Court and CAFC disagreed. The courts looked to the specification, and to the prosecution history wherein the Applicant had relied upon the results of administering the combination drug to assert patentability over the prior art. It was also noted that the Examiner had explicitly relied upon the “wherein” clauses in his explanation as to why the claims were novel and non-obvious over the prior art in the Notice of Allowance.
The courts differentiated this case from the previous case argued by Sandoz in that, “In Bristol–Myers we expressly noted that the disputed claim terms “w[ere] voluntarily made after the examiner had already indicated . . . the claims were allowable” and such “unsolicited assertions of patentability made during prosecution do not create a material claim limitation.”
Accordingly, “the District Court “f[ound] that the ‘wherein’ clauses are limiting because they are material to patentability and express the inventive aspect of the claimed invention” and the CAFC affirmed.
Take-away
“The specification is always highly relevant to the claim construction analysis and is, in fact, the single best guide to the meaning of a disputed term.” Prosecution history and the Examiner’s express rational for allowance are also highly relevant.
WHEN FIGURES IN A DESIGN PATENT DO NOT CLEARLY SHOW AN ARTICLE OF MANUFACTURE FOR THE ORNAMENTAL DESIGN, THE TITLE AND CLAIM LANGUAGE CAN LIMIT THE SCOPE OF THE DESIGN PATENT
Sung-Hoon Kim | October 7, 2019
Curver Luxembourg, SARL, v. Home Expressions Inc.
September 12, 2019
Chen (author), Hughes, and Stoll
Summary:
The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s grant of a defendant’s motion to dismiss a complaint for failure to state a plausible claim of design patent infringement because when all of the drawings in a design patent at issue do not describe an article of manufacture for the ornamental design, the title, claim language, figure descriptions specifying an article of manufacture, which was amended during the prosecution of the patent based on the Examiner’s proposed amendment, can limit the scope of a design patent.
Details:
The ‘946 Patent
Curver Luxembourg, SARL (Curver) is the assignee of U.S. Design Patent No. D677,946 (‘946 patent) with a title “Pattern for a Chair” and claiming an “ornamental design for a pattern for a chair.” The ‘946 patent claims an overlapping “Y” design, as shown below. However, none of the figures illustrate a design being applied to a chair.
Prosecution
Curver originally applied for a patent directed to a pattern for “furniture,” and the original title was “FURNITURE (PART OF-).” The original claim recited a “design for a furniture part.”
However, during the prosecution, the Examiner allowed the claim but objected to the title because it was too vague to constitute an article of manufacture (in Ex Parte Quayle Action). The Examiner suggested amending the title to read “Pattern for a Chair,” and Curver accepted the Examiner’s suggestion by replacing the title with “Pattern for a Chair” and amending the claim term “furniture part” with “pattern for a chair.” Curver did not amend the figures to illustrate a chair. The Examiner accepted Curver’s amendments and allowed the application.
District Court
Home Expressions makes and sells baskets with a similar overlapping “Y” design disclosed in the ‘946 patent.
Curver sued Home Expressions accusing its basket products of infringing the ‘946 patent. Home Expressions filed a motion to discuss Curver’s complaint under Rule 12(b)(6) for failing to set forth a plausible claim of infringement.
Using a two-step analysis, the district court construed the scope of the ‘946 patent to be limited to the design pattern illustrated in the figures as applied to a chair and found that an ordinary observer would not purchase Home Expressions’s basket with “Y” design believing that the purchase was for “Y” design applied to a chair.
Therefore, the district court granted the Rule 12(b)(6) motion.
CAFC
The CAFC held that to define the scope of a design patent, the court traditionally focused on the figures illustrated in the patent. However, when all of the drawings fail to describe an article of manufacture for the ornamental design, the CAFC held that claim language specifying an article of manufacture can limit the scope of a design patent.
In addition, the CAFC uses §1.153(a) to held that “the design be tied to a particular article, but this regulation permits claim language, not just illustration along, to identify that article.”
The title of the design must designate the particular article. No description, other than a reference to the drawing, is ordinarily required. The claim shall be in formal terms to the ornamental design for the article (specifying name) as shown, or as shown and described.
The CAFC held that the prosecution history shows that Curver amended the title, claim, figure descriptions to recite “pattern for a chair” in order to satisfy the article of manufacture requirement necessary to secure its design patent. Therefore, the CAFC held that the scope of the ‘946 patent should be limited by those amendments.
Therefore, the CAFC affirmed the district court’s grant of Home Expressions’s motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a plausible claim of design patent infringement.
Takeaway:
- When figures in a design patent do not clearly show an article of manufacture for the ornamental design, the title and claim language can limit the scope of the design patent.
- Applicant should review the Examiner’s proposed amendments carefully before placing the application in condition for allowance.
- Applicant should be careful when crafting the title and claim language.
Tags: article of manufacture > claim > Design Patent > figure > patent infringement > title
A Good Fry: Patent on Oil Quality Sensing Technology for Deep Fryers Survives Inter Partes Review
WHDA Blogging Team | October 4, 2019
Henny Penny Corporation v. Frymaster LLC
September 12, 2019
Before Lourie, Chen, and Stoll (Opinion by Lourie)
Summary
In an appeal from an inter partes review, the Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decision to uphold the validity of a patent relating to oil quality sensing technology for deep fryers. The Board found, and the Federal Circuit agreed, that the disadvantages of pursuing the challenger’s proposed modification of the prior art weighed against obviousness, in the absence of some articulated rationale as to why a person of ordinary skill in the art would have pursued that modification. In addition, the Federal Circuit reiterated that as a matter of procedure, the scope of an inter partes review is limited to the theories of unpatentability presented in the original petition.
Details
Fries are among the most common deep-fried foods, and McDonald’s fries may still be the most popular and highest-consumed worldwide. But, there would be no McDonald’s fries without a deep fryer and a good pot of oil, and Frymaster LLC (“Frymaster”) is the maker of some of McDonald’s deep fryers.
During deep frying, chemical and thermal interactions between the hot frying oil and the submerged food cause the food to cook. These interactions degrade the quality of the oil. In particular, chemical reactions during frying generate new compounds, including total polar materials (TPM), that can change the oil’s physical properties and electrical conductivity.
Frymaster’s fryers are equipped with integrated oil quality sensors (OQS), which monitor oil quality by measuring the oil’s electrical conductivity as an indicator of the TPM levels in the oil. This sensor technology is embodied in Frymaster’s U.S. Patent No. 8,497,691 (“691 patent”).
The 691 patent describes an oil quality sensor that is integrated directly into the circulation of cooking oil in a deep fryer, and is capable of taking measurements at the deep fryer’s operational temperatures of 150-180°C, i.e., without cooling the hot oil.
Claim 1 of the 691 patent is representative:
1. A system for measuring the state of degradation of cooking oils or fats in a deep fryer comprising:
at least one fryer pot;
a conduit fluidly connected to said at least one fryer pot for transporting cooking oil from said at least one fryer pot and returning the cooking oil back to said at least one fryer pot;
a means for re-circulating said cooking oil to and from said fryer pot; and
a sensor external to said at least on[e] fryer pot and disposed in fluid communication with said conduit to measure an electrical property that is indicative of total polar materials of said cooking oil as the cooking oil flows past said sensor and is returned to said at least one fryer pot;
wherein said conduit comprises a drain pipe that transports oil from said at least one fryer pot and a return pipe that returns oil to said at least one fryer pot,
wherein said return pipe or said drain pipe comprises two portions and said sensor is disposed in an adapter installed between said two portions, and
wherein said adapter has two opposite ends wherein one of said two ends is connected to one of said two portions and the other of said two ends is connected to the other of said two portions.
Figure 2 of the 691 patent illustrates the structure of Frymaster’s system:
Henny Penny Corporation (HPC) is a competitor of Frymaster, and initiated an inter partes review of the 691 patent.
In its petition, HPC challenged claim 1 of the 691 patent as being obvious over Kauffman (U.S. Patent No. 5,071,527) in view of Iwaguchi (JP2005-55198).
Kauffman taught a system for “complete analysis of used oils, lubricants, and fluids”. The system included an integrated electrode positioned between drain and return lines connected to a fluid reservoir. The electrode measured conductivity and current to monitor antioxidant depletion, oxidation initiator buildup, product buildup, and/or liquid contamination. Kauffman’s system operated at 20-400°C. However, Kauffman did not teach monitoring TPMs.
Iwaguchi taught monitoring TPMs to gauge quality of oil in deep fryers. However, Iwaguchi cooled the oil to 40-80°C before taking measurements. If the oil temperature was outside the disclosed range, Iwaguchi’s system would register an error. Specifically, oil was diverted from the frying pot to a heat dissipator where the oil was cooled to the appropriate temperature, and then to a detection vessel where a TPM detector measured the electrical properties of the oil to detect TPMs. Iwaguchi taught that cooling relieved heat stress on the detector, prevented degradation, and obviated the need for large conversion tables.
The parties’ dispute focused on the sensor feature of the 691 patent.
In the initial petition, HPC argued simply that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to modify Kauffman’s system to “include the processor and/or sensor as taught by Iwaguchi.”
In its patent owner’s response, Frymaster disputed HPC’s proposed modification. Frymaster argued that Iwaguchi’s “temperature sensitive” detector would be inoperable in an “integrated” system such as that taught in Kauffman, unless Kauffman’s system was further modified to add an oil diversion and cooling loop. However, such an addition would have been complex, inefficient, and undesirable to those skilled in the art.
In its reply, HPC changed course and argued that it was unnecessary to swap the electrode in Kauffman’s system for Iwaguchi’s detector. HPC argued that Kauffman’s electrode was capable of monitoring TPMs by measuring conductivity, and that Iwaguchi was relevant only for teaching the general desirability of using TPMs to assess oil quality.
However, whereas HPC’s theory of obviousness in its original petition was based on a modification of the physical structure of Kauffman’s system, HPC’s reply proposed changing only the oil quality parameter being measured. During the oral hearing before the Board, HPC’s counsel even admitted to this shift in HPC’s theory of obviousness.
In its final written decision, the Board determined, as a threshold matter of procedure, that HPC impermissibly presented a new theory of obviousness in its reply, and that the patentability of the 691 patent would be assessed only against the grounds asserted in HPC’s original petition.
The Board’s final written decision thus addressed only whether the person skilled in the art would have been motivated to “include”—that is, integrate—Iwaguchi’s detector into Kauffman’s system. The Board found no such motivation.
The Board’s reasoning largely mirrored Frymaster’s arguments. Kauffman’s system did not include a cooling mechanism that would have allowed Iwaguchi’s temperature-sensitive detector to work. Integrating Iwaguchi’s detector into Kauffman’s system would therefore necessitate the addition of the cooling mechanism. The Board agreed that the disadvantages of such additional construction outweighed the “uncertain benefits” of TPM measurements over the other indicia of oil quality already being monitored in Kauffman.
On appeal, HPC raised two issues: first, the Board construed the scope of HPC’s original petition overly narrowly; and second, the Board erred in its conclusion of nonobviousness.[1]
The Federal Circuit sided with the Board on both issues.
On the first issue, the Federal Circuit did a straightforward comparison of HPC’s petition and reply. In the petition, HPC proposed a physical substitution of Iwaguchi’s detector for Kauffman’s electrode. In the reply, HPC proposed using conductivity measured by Kauffman’s electrode as a basis for calculating TPMs. The apparent differences between the two theories of obviousness, together with the “telling” confirmation of HPC’s counsel during oral hearing that the original petition espoused a physical modification, made it easy for the Federal Circuit to agree with the Board’s decision to disregard HPC’s alternative theory raised in its reply.
The Federal Circuit reiterated the importance of a complete petition:
It is of the utmost importance that petitioners in the IPR proceedings adhere to the requirement that the initial petition identify ‘with particularity’ the ‘evidence that supports the grounds for the challenge to each claim.
On the second issue of obviousness, HPC argued that the Board placed undue weight on the disadvantages of incorporating Iwaguchi’s TPM detector into Kauffman’s system.
Here, the Federal Circuit reiterated “the longstanding principle that the prior art must be considered for all its teachings, not selectively.” While “[t]he fact that the motivating benefit comes at the expense of another benefit…should not nullify its use as a basis to modify the disclosure of one reference with the teachings of another”, “the benefits, both lost and gained, should be weighed against one another.”
The Federal Circuit adopted the Board’s findings on the undesirability of HPC’s proposed modification of Kauffman, agreeing that the “tradeoffs [would] yield an unappetizing combination, especially because Kauffman already teaches a sensor that measures other indicia of oil quality.”
At first glance, the nonobviousness analysis in this decision seems to involve weighing the disadvantages and advantages of the proposed modification. However, looking at the history of this case, I think the problem with HPC’s arguments was more fundamentally that they never identified a satisfactory motivation to make the proposed modification. HPC’s original petition argued that the motivation for integrating Iwaguchi’s detector into Kauffman’s system was to “accurately” determine oil quality. This “accuracy” argument failed because it was questionable whether Iwaguchi’s detector would even work at the operating temperature of a deep fryer. Further, HPC did not argue that the proposed modification was a simple substitution of one known sensor for another with the predictable result of measuring TPMs. And when Kauffman argued that the substitution was far from simple, HPC failed to counter with adequate reasons why the person skilled in the art would have pursued the complex modification.
Takeaway
- The petition for a post grant review defines the scope of the proceeding. Avoid being overly generic in a petition for post grant review. It may not be possible to fill in the details later.
- Context matters. If an Examiner is selectively citing to isolated disclosures in a prior art out of context, consider whether the context of the prior art would lead away from the claimed invention.
- The MPEP is clear that the disadvantages of a proposed combination of the prior art do not necessarily negate the motivation to combine (see, e.g., MPEP 2143(V)). The disadvantages should preferably nullify the Examiner’s reasons for the modification.
[1] On the issue of obviousness, HPC also objected to the Board’s analysis of Frymaster’s proffered evidence of industry praise as secondary considerations. This objection is not addressed here.
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