The PTAB did not err in finding that airplane interior designers would have been motivated to combine prior art to arrive at the space-saving configuration disclosed by the challenged patents.
Challenged claims of patents related to space-saving technologies for aircraft lavatories and other aircraft enclosures were correctly determined by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to be invalid for obviousness, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. According to the court, the Board, in reaching its conclusion in an inter partes review proceeding, did not erroneously incorporate a limitation not disclosed in the prior art. Nor did the Board err by considering design drawings submitted by the review petitioner as proof of design elements that were known in the art at the critical time of the challenged patents (B/E Aerospace, Inc. v. C&D Zodiac, Inc., June 26, 2020, Reyna, J.).
Case date: 26 June 2020
Case number: No. 19-1935
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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