Re: Supreme Court Smacks Down Federal Circuit

Lawrence B. Ebert — Wed, 02 May 2007 23:38:31 -0000

Claim 4 of US Patent 6,237,565 to Teleflex (not KSR, please note error in above post) reads:

A vehicle control pedal apparatus (12) comprising:

a support (18) adapted to be mounted to a vehicle structure (20);

an adjustable pedal assembly (22) having a pedal arm (14) moveable
in
force [sic] and aft directions with respect to said support (18);

a pivot (24) for pivotally supporting said adjustable pedal
assembly
(22) with respect to said support (18) and defining a pivot
axis (26); and

an electronic control (28) attached to said support (18) for
controlling a vehicle system;

said apparatus (12) characterized by said electronic control (28)
being responsive to said pivot (24) for providing a signal (32)
that
corresponds to pedal arm position as said pedal arm (14) pivots
about
said pivot axis (26) between rest and applied positions wherein
the
position of said pivot (24) remains constant while said pedal arm
(14)
moves in fore and aft directions with respect to said pivot (24).

The CAFC was making a big deal about the absence of motivation for --electronic control (28) attached to said support--.

In a NONPRECEDENTIAL opinion, the CAFC wrote: Claim 4 specifically provides for an assembly
wherein the electronic control is mounted to the support bracket of the assembly. This configuration avoids movement of the electronic control during adjustment of the
pedal's position on the assembly.

The Supreme Court considered putting the electronic control on the support "obvious to try," but the CAFC had required "obvious to try with a reasonable expectation of success." Roughly speaking, that's what changed.

The comments about "nature of the problem" were a bit bogus, because the CAFC was reviewing how the district court had analyzed the problem. The "nature of the problem" was NEVER the only way to establish motivation.

See also
KSR: an overemphasis on the importance of published articles[?]

and, for a situation in which the new test will likely play out badly,

KSR v. Teleflex: it's not bedtime for Bongso

Re: Supreme Court Smacks Down Federal Circuit

Lawrence B. Ebert — Wed, 02 May 2007 23:14:18 -0000

Of the above comment, KSR did not patent a concept, AND, separately, the issue that the CAFC worried about (and the Supreme Court did not worry about) was where the sensor was mounted.

For a comparison of what the CAFC and Supreme Court were talking about, see IPFrontline.

Re: Supreme Court Smacks Down Federal Circuit

Steve_R — Tue, 01 May 2007 12:05:01 -0000

While this decision is a step in the right direction, I still believe that we haven't gotten down to the fundamental issue. The fundamental issue is that concepts cannot be patented.

What Teleflex could have patented was a device that could read the position of a gas peddle. However, KSR - if it independently developed its own device - would not infringe on Teleflex's patent since the concept and design of using remote sensing has been around for a long long time. For KSR to infringe, they would have had to have used the design drawings of Teleflex.

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