Petitioner expert testimony in inter partes review of a surgical tool patent was more credible than patent owner’s expert that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine asserted prior art and would have had a reasonable expectation of success in do so.
There was substantial evidence to support the Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision in two consolidated inter partes review proceedings that the challenged claims of a surgical stapling device patent were unpatentable as obvious, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. The testimony of the petitioner’s expert was found to be logical and credible and supported the factual finding that a skilled artisan would have had a reasonable expectation of success in combining two prior art references. Thus, the Board’s decision that the challenged claims of the patent were unpatentable was affirmed (Ethicon LLC v. Intuitive Surgical, Inc., May 23, 2022, Reyna, J.).
Case date: 23 May 2022
Case number: No 21-1995
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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