In re Icon Health and Fitness (Fed. Cir. 2007).
ICON has been a party in more than 50 patent infringement lawsuits and has asserted its treadmill patent (5,676,624) against at least six defendants. In the midst of litigation, ICON also filed for reexamination, and now appeals the PTO’s final rejection of its patent to the CAFC.
ICON admits that all but one of the claimed elements are disclosed in a Danmark International advertisement. The remaining element, a gas stabilizing spring, is found in Teague where it is used to assist in opening and closing of a Murphy style bed.
Reasonably Pertinent Art: To be used in an obviousness rejection, prior art must be “reasonably pertinent to the problem addressed” by the patent applicant. Usually this is satisfied by references in the same field of technology or that address the same problem. Here, the CAFC saw enough similarity to find the bed art pertinent:
“Nothing about Icon’s folding mechanism requires any particular focus on treadmills; it generally addresses problems of supporting the weight of such a mechanism and providing a stable resting position. Analogous art to Icon’s application, when considering the folding mechanism and gas spring limitation, may come from any area describing hinges, springs, latches, counterweights, or other similar mechanisms—such as the folding bed in Teague.”
Although the patent applicant lost this argument, this portion of the case is good news for applicants – because of what the opinion did not say. Specifically, the court could have begun with the announcement that “In KSR, the Supreme Court expanded the notion of pertinent obviousness-type prior art when it announced that ‘patent examiners should look [beyond] the problem the patentee was trying to solve.’ . . .” Instead, the CAFC decided to stick to its narrower jurisprudence.
All elements = Obvious: Under KSR, once the elements are shown in reasonably pertinent art, then an obviousness determination is as simple as connecting the dots. The court says as much:
[W]hile perhaps not dispositive of the issue, the finding that Teague, by addressing a similar problem, provides analogous art to Icon’s application goes a long way towards demonstrating a reason to combine the two references.
Here, the Court explained a connection be tween Teague and the claimed invention by showing that both used the spring in similar ways.
Notes:
- A report from Steve Sereboff indicates that the PTO has already taken this decision to heart in its new examiner training: “Basically, the examiners can make a prima facie case of obviousness simply by showing that all of the elements in the claim were known.”
