CAFC addresses IPR amendment procedure in Aqua Products; PTAB's approach upheld

The outcome of the appeal of an IPR decision in Aqua Products:


Aqua Products, Inc. (“Aqua”) appeals from the final written decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“Board”) in an inter partes review (“IPR”) of U.S. Patent No. 8,273,183 (“’183 patent”). The Board denied Aqua’s motion to substitute claims 22–24. Aqua challenges the Board’s amendment procedures, which require the patentee to demonstrate that the amended claims would be patentable over the art of record. We affirm.



The issue in the case concerned amending the claims:



In its motion to amend, Aqua argued that the combination of Henkin and Myers does not render the substitute claims obvious because it does not suggest the vector limitation. J.A. 2289–91. Although Aqua referenced the other added limitations, it did not argue that those other limitations would have been non-obvious in light of Henkin and Myers. Regarding objective indicia, Aqua characterized its commercial embodiments as “successful” and it implied that Zodiac may have copied the design, but Aqua did not argue that these objective indicia were tied to the vector limitation or that they otherwise demonstrated that the vector limitation was non-obvious. J.A. 2288. The Board denied Aqua’s motion to amend. It reasoned that the vector limitation would have been obvious because Henkin teaches positioning the jet at an angle that satisfies the vector limitation.



The appeal


Aqua appeals the Board’s denial of its motion to amend. Aqua argues that Board regulations requiring the patentee to demonstrate that an amended claim is patentable over the art of record are unsupported by statute, and that the Board’s interpretation of those regulations impermissibly places the burden on the patentee to show non-obviousness. Moreover, Aqua argues that the Board abused its discretion by denying the motion to amend without considering all the new limitations and the objective indicia of non-obviousness, as would be required for invalidating an original claim.



Aqua's statutory argument was dead on arrival and the abuse of discretion argument also failed



Our precedent has upheld the Board’s approach of allocating to the patentee the burden of showing that its proposed amendments would overcome the art of record. In Microsoft Corp. v. Proxyconn, Inc., 789 F.3d 1292, 1307−08 (Fed. Cir. 2015), we upheld the Board’s interpretation of its regulations, requiring the patentee to establish that proposed amendments would overcome the art of record. See also Prolitec, Inc. v. ScentAir Techs., Inc., 807 F.3d 1353, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2015). In Nike, Inc. v. Adidas AG, 812 F.3d 1326, 1333−34 (Fed. Cir. 2016), we further held that the Board’s regulations concerning motions to amend and its interpretation thereof are consistent with the AIA’s statutory framework, even though the framework generally places the burden of proving unpatentability on the IPR petitioner. Given our precedent, this panel cannot revisit the question of whether the Board may require the patentee to demonstrate the patentability of substitute claims over the art of record. The only issue left open for our consideration is whether the Board abused its discretion by failing to evaluate objective indicia of non-obviousness and various new limitations in the proposed claims, even though Aqua did not argue that those indicia and limitations distinguish the proposed claims over the combination of Henkin and Myers. We find no abuse of discretion.