The PTAB did not establish the existence of a motivation for a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine the aspects of existing patents and prior art.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has vacated and remanded a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board holding that a patent for an in-the-ear medical device was obvious in light of several other patents and prior art. To the contrary, the appellate court concluded that obviousness was not proven because the Board’s decision did not articulate a basis or rationale sufficient to show that a person of ordinary skill in the art would modify the devices existing under prior patents and prior art (In re Anova Hearing Labs, Inc., April 7, 2020, Moore, K.).
Case date: 07 April 2020
Case number: No. 19-1507
Court: United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit
A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
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