Today’s guest post was written by Garth M. Dahlen, Ph.D., Partner at Birch, Stewart, Kolasch & Birch, LLP.

The purpose of this article is to provide suggestions on how to effectively make a showing of unexpected results during prosecution before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in order to overcome a rejection based on obviousness under 35 U.S.C. §103(a).

I. General Comments

“One way for a patent applicant to rebut a prima facie case of obviousness is to make a showing of ‘unexpected results,’ i.e., to show that the claimed invention exhibits some superior property or advantage that a person of ordinary skill in the relevant art would have found surprising or unexpected. The basic principle behind this rule is straightforward – that which would have been surprising to a person of ordinary skill in a particular art would not have been obvious.” In re Soni, 54 F.3d 746, 750, 34 USPQ2d 1684, 1687 (Fed. Cir. 1995).

In the chemical arts, which are unpredictable relative to the mechanical and electrical arts, making a showing of unexpected results is a commonly used tool for overcoming a prima facie case of obviousness. As a chemical practitioner, I am routinely asserting that there is evidence of unexpected results. This led to an interest in learning more about how the Board treats a showing of unexpected results. As such, I reviewed about 100 cases decided by the Board. It became readily apparent from the decisions that the Board was looking to see if certain requirements were met, and if the requirements were not met, the Examiner’s obviousness rejection was affirmed.

I was surprised to find that the Board reversed the obviousness rejections in only about 10% of the cases where the Board agreed with the Examiner that a prima facie case of obviousness existed and that unexpected results had been asserted by Appellants.[1]

It was surprising to find such a low reversal rate. Admittedly, this rate may be deflated somewhat by cases where Appellants have merely argued that there are advantages associated with the invention (i.e., there was no intention to argue unexpected results), and the Board, for completeness of the record, indicated that the evidence is insufficient to show unexpected results. Nevertheless, it is believed that the effect these cases have on the magnitude of the reversal rate is minimal.

This finding brings to mind some questions. Is the Patent and Trademark Office very good at teaching Examiners how to analyze for unexpected results (or lack thereof)? Is the Board actually giving substantial weight to the Examiner’s determination that the results are not unexpected in view of the Examiner’s expertise in the art.

Answering these particular questions goes beyond the scope of this article; however, this article can serve a purpose by explaining the requirements for a proper showing of unexpected results, and how best to satisfy these requirements.

First, it needs to be clear who holds the burden of production and when the burden shifts. The Examiner bears the initial burden of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness, and if that burden is met, the burden shifts to the Applicant to come forward with evidence or argument in rebuttal. In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992). Once a prima facie case of obviousness exists, Applicant bears the burden of rebutting the prima facie case by the presentation of evidence of secondary considerations (such as unexpected results). When such evidence is submitted, all of the evidence must be considered anew. In re Piasecki, 745 F2d 1468, 1472-1473, 223 USPQ 785, 787-788 (Fed. Cir. 1984).

It is true that a showing of unexpected results can be made using the examples in the specification. In re Soni, F.3d at 750, USPQ2d at 1687, (“Consistent with the rule that all evidence of nonobviousness must be considered when assessing patentability, the PTO must consider comparative data in the specification in determining whether the claimed invention provides unexpected results.”). However, based on the requirements for a proper showing of unexpected results, it is far better to make a showing in the form of a Declaration under 37 C.F.R. §1.132 executed by an inventor or one skilled in the art. Even in situations where Applicant is relying on the experiments which have already been reported in the specification, it is best to reiterate the specification’s experiments in the Declaration, so that the “story” of patentability is presented in a nice package for the Examiner. Also, it is very unlikely that the specification was drafted with sufficient foresight to know the exact combination of references which are now being cited by the Examiner. As such, the Declaration provides a vehicle for the Declarant to make comments on the exact combination of cited references. Examiners will naturally give more weight to opinions of a Declarant who is better trained than the attorney to make inferences from the cited references.

I – A. Compare with the Closest Prior Art

One of the more common criticisms made by the Board in the cases that were reviewed, was that the claimed subject matter was not compared to the closest prior art. In re Baxter Travenol Labs., 952 F.2d 388, 392, 21 USPQ2d 1281, 1285 (Fed. Cir. 1991) (“[W]hen unexpected results are used as evidence of nonobviousness, the results must be shown to be unexpected compared with the closest prior art.”).

In the “Ideal Declaration,” a direct comparison is made between the closest prior art and the claimed invention. A representative number of examples of the closest prior art (usually the primary reference in the rejection) are exactly repeated. These become the comparative examples for purposes of the Declaration. Then inventive examples are prepared by modifying a single variable of the prior art examples so the new examples fall within the scope of the currently claimed invention. In this Ideal Declaration, the inventive examples are shown to have at least one greatly improved property over that displayed by the comparative examples, and the magnitude of the improvement is clearly unexpected.

However, more often than not, an Ideal Declaration is not practical. Running new experiments may be too costly/time consuming. There may be multiple variables which have to be modified for the comparative example to fall within the scope of the current set of claims. Also, even more perplexing is dealing with cited references having examples which are so vaguely described that repeating the examples would involve a significant amount of guess work. In these situations, declarative evidence can still be used to overcome the prima facie case.

I – B. Indirect Comparison with Prior Art

Even an indirect comparison with respect to unexpected results is permissible. See e.g In re Boesch and Slaney, 617 F.2d at 276-77, 205 USPQ 215, 219 (C.C.P.A. 1980) (citing In re Payne, 606 F.2d 303, 316, 203 USPQ 245, 256, (CCPA 1979), and cases cited therein) (“proof of unexpected properties may be in the form of direct or indirect comparative testing of the claimed compounds (here, alloys) and the closest prior art”); In re Blondel, 499 F.2d 1311, 1317, 182 USPQ 294, 298 (CCPA 1974). However, in such a case, Applicant must establish that the asserted indirect evidence demonstrates unexpected results for the claimed alloys. See, e.g., Blondel, 499 F.2d at 1317, 182 USPQ at 298 (“Appellants’ brief goes through a detailed, step-by-step analysis of the evidence in support of the conclusion to be drawn from the indirect comparison,” establishing that the indirect evidence provided a reliable indication of the performance of the closest claimed and prior art compounds).

I – C. Interview Examiner Before Conducting Tests

Ascertaining the degree to which the evidence compares results of the claimed subject matter against those of the closest prior art is largely subjective. As such, unless the Ideal Declaration (discussed above) can be prepared, it is best to conduct an Interview with the Examiner to discuss the experimental design prior to conducting any experiments. It is far better to receive criticism of the experimental design prior to expending time/capital in conducting the experiments.

I – D. How Many Tests Need to be Conducted?

Another of the more common criticisms made by the Board in the cases that were reviewed, was that the showing of unexpected results was not commensurate in scope with the claimed invention. “In order to establish unexpected results for a claimed invention, objective evidence of non-obviousness must be commensurate in scope with the claims which the evidence is offered to support.” In re Clemens, 622 F.2d 1029, 1035, 206 USPQ 289, 296 (CCPA 1980).

I – E. What is “Unexpected?”

Lastly, there were cases where the Board would simply find that the evidence did not rise to the level of being “unexpected.”

I – F. Conclusion

In summary, three common criticisms made by the Board were: i) the results were not “unexpected;” ii) the comparison was not made with the closest prior art; and iii) the showing of unexpected results was not commensurate in scope with the claimed invention.

In order to address these criticisms, a Rule 132 Declaration should include the following sections.

Click here for the remainder of the article –   Prosecuting Patent Applications: Establishing Unexpected Results.

---

[1] In coming up with this reversal rate of “about 10%”, a keyword search was performed on November 25-26, 2010 at the Board’s website (http://des.uspto.gov/Foia/BPAIReadingRoom.jsp) for the term “unexpected.” The results list was ordered by decision date and reviewed starting with the most recent decision. Cases were retained that met certain criteria. The criteria was based on actions of the Board. Cases met the criteria if the Board: a) took the position that Appellants were arguing that there was timely filed evidence of unexpected results in response to a rejection under 35 U.S.C. §103(a); b) agreed with the Examiner that a prima facie case of obviousness existed over the cited art; and c) weighted the asserted evidence. All other cases were excluded. Upon reaching 109 cases meeting the criteria, the review of cases was discontinued. Of the 109 cases retained, 12 cases were found where the Examiner’s rejections were reversed. This gives a reversal rate of 11.0%, which I refer to herein as being “about 10%.”

Tags: "Ideal Declaration", "unexpected results", chemical arts, In re Soni, obviousness, Patent Examiner, prior art, prosecuting patent applications, USPTO

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 16th, 2010 at 14:51 and is filed under Board of Patent Appeals & Interferences, Patent Prosecution, posts, prior art, USPTO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.