CAFC does secondary considerations in Yita v. MacNeil

The coutccome:


MacNeil IP LLC is the assignee of two U.S. patents, Nos. 8,382,186 and 8,833,834, that were the subject of decisions by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in inter partes reviews (IPRs) of challenges to all claims of the patents on obviousness grounds presented in petitions filed by Yita LLC. In IPR 2020-01139, the Board rejected Yita’s challenge to all claims (1–7) of the ’186 patent, concluding that—although a relevant artisan would have been motivated to combine, and had a reasonable expectation of success in combining, the teachings of the asserted prior-art references to arrive at each challenged claim—“[MacNeil’s] evidence of secondary considerations [was] compelling and indicative of non-obviousness.” J.A. 81. Yita appeals that ruling. In IPR 2020-01142, the Board, while agreeing with Yita’s challenge to claims 13–15 of the ’834 patent (a ruling that MacNeil does not appeal), rejected Yita’s challenge to claims 1–12. Yita appeals that ruling. For the reasons below, we reverse the Board’s judgment in the ’1139 IPR and affirm its judgment in the ’1142 IPR.


Some law


“Obviousness is a question of law based on underlying facts, including the scope and content of the prior art, differences between the prior art and the claims at issue, the level of ordinary skill, and relevant evidence of secondary considerations.” Henny Penny Corp. v. Frymaster LLC, 938 F.3d 1324, 1331 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (citing Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17–18 (1966)); see KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 406– 07, 427 (2007); Intercontinental Great Brands LLC v. Kellogg North America Co., 869 F.3d 1336, 1343–44, 1347 (Fed. Cir. 2017). Secondary considerations include whether the claimed invention has been commercially successful, whether it solved a long-felt but unsolved need in the art, and whether the relevant industry praised it. See Graham, 383 U.S. at 17–18. To be relevant, such a secondary consideration must have a “legally and factually sufficient connection” (nexus) to the claimed invention. Fox Factory, 944 F.3d at 1373. A nexus is presumed when a commercial product (if relevantly successful, for example) “is the invention disclosed and claimed in the patent.” Immunex Corp. v. Sandoz Inc., 964 F.3d 1049, 1067 (Fed. Cir. 2020) (quoting WBIP, 829 F.3d at 1329).


But our case law makes clear that “objective evidence of nonobviousness lacks a nexus if it exclusively relates to a feature that was ‘known in the prior art’”—not necessarily well-known. Rambus Inc. v. Rea, 731 F.3d 1248, 1257 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (emphasis added) (quoting Ormco Corp. v. Align Technology, Inc., 463 F.3d 1299, 1312 (Fed. Cir. 2006)); see also Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. v. Covidien LP, 812 F.3d 1023, 1034 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (“[I]f the feature that creates the commercial success was known in the prior art, the success is not pertinent.” (quoting Ormco, 463 F.3d at 1312)). Where prior art teaches a feature and a relevant artisan would have been motivated to use it in combination with other prior-art teachings with a reasonable expectation of success to arrive at the claimed invention—as the Board here found—a secondary consideration related exclusively to that feature does not logically undermine the inference from those premises that the claimed invention would have been obvious from the full body of prior art just because the feature was not well known.

Second, the Board, citing WBIP, stated that “[t]he Federal Circuit instructs that ‘it is the claimed combination as a whole that serves as a nexus for objective evidence; proof of nexus is not limited to only when objective evidence is tied to the supposedly “new” feature(s).’” J.A. 75 (quoting and citing WBIP, 829 F.3d at 1330). But in WBIP we recognized that secondary-consideration evidence “may be linked to an individual element” of the claimed invention or “to the inventive combination of known elements” in the prior art. 829 F.3d at 1332. It was for the latter circumstance, which was the circumstance present in WBIP, that this court in WBIP made the point relied on by the Board here. But that rationale, applicable when no single feature (but only the combination) is responsible for the secondaryconsideration evidence, does not undermine our case law, just discussed, denying force to a secondary consideration that is exclusively related to a single feature that is in the prior art.