{"id":1687,"date":"2017-08-04T19:16:33","date_gmt":"2017-08-04T23:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1687"},"modified":"2017-08-04T19:16:33","modified_gmt":"2017-08-04T23:16:33","slug":"board-was-mixed-up-over-blender-patent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=1687","title":{"rendered":"Board Was Mixed Up Over Blender Patent"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Homeland Housewares, LLC v. Whirlpool Corp.<\/a>, [2016-1511](August 4, 2017), the Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB’s determination that Whirlpool’s\u00a0U.S. Patent No. 7,581,688 relating to household blender was not anticipated by\u00a0U.S. Patent No. 6,609,821.<\/p>\n

The patent claims a pre-programmed,\u00a0automated blending cycle designed to blend items \u201cby repeatedly dropping to a speed slow\u00a0enough to allow the blender contents to settle around the\u00a0cutter assembly, and then returning to a [higher] speed\u00a0suitable for processing the contents.\u201d \u00a0It was\u00a0it was well known\u00a0that a user could manually pulse between a high\u00a0speed and a low speed to achieve efficient\u00a0mixing. \u00a0Thus, in the words of the Federal Circuit “the claimed automatic blending\u00a0routine was, in the prior art, done manually.”<\/p>\n

Claim 1 provided that during pulsing, \u201cthe\u00a0speed of the cutter assembly is reduced from the operating\u00a0speed to a predetermined settling speed.\u201d The Federal Circuit noted that the Board failed to explicitly construe “settling speed,” even though the parties disagreed about its meaning. \u00a0Whirlpool urged a construction the essentially required an empirical determination of the settling speed, while Homeland urged a construction that that \u201csettling speed\u201d means any\u00a0comparative low speed less than the operating speed. \u00a0The Federal Circuit found that both parties were wrong, and that the\u00a0broadest reasonable construction of \u201ca predetermined\u00a0settling speed\u201d is a speed that is slower than the\u00a0operating speed and permits settling of the blender contents.<\/p>\n

With this construction the Federal Circuit found that the Wulf reference’s teaching of \u00a0alternating between high and low speeds “permits the material being blended to fall back to\u00a0the region of the cutting knives” met the claim language. \u00a0While the Board credited Whirlpool’s exert testimony because it was unrebutted, the \u00a0Federal Circuit said that expert testimony should be disregarded when it is plainly inconsistent with\u00a0the record.<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit found all of the claims anticipated, and vacated the decision of the Board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Homeland Housewares, LLC v. Whirlpool Corp., [2016-1511](August 4, 2017), the Federal Circuit reversed the PTAB’s determination that Whirlpool’s\u00a0U.S. Patent No. 7,581,688 relating to household blender was not anticipated by\u00a0U.S. Patent No. 6,609,821. The patent claims a pre-programmed,\u00a0automated blending cycle … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anticipation","category-ipr"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1688,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions\/1688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}