{"id":250,"date":"2015-09-08T22:33:06","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T02:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=250"},"modified":"2015-09-12T10:19:52","modified_gmt":"2015-09-12T14:19:52","slug":"a-dose-of-reality-can-treat-infectious-hindsight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=250","title":{"rendered":"A Dose of Reality Can Treat Infectious Hindsight"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Ivera Medical Corp. v. Hospira, Inc.<\/em>, [2014-1613, 2014-1614] (September 8, 2015), the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s\u00a0summary judgment of invalidity of U.S. Patent\u00a0Nos.\u00a07,780,794, 7,985,302, and 8,206,514, directed to a medical implement cleaning device.\u00a0 One embodiment of the device was a threaded cap containing a cleaning material that contained a cleaning agent.\u00a0 The invention as a vent in the cap “to allow evaporation of the cleaning agent from the inner cavity and to inhibit a buildup of pressure in the cap when the cleaning material is compressed.”\u00a0 The district court said that\u00a0a person of ordinary skill would not \u201cneed the benefit of hindsight to realize that adding a vent would relieve possible pressure on the inside of the cap.\u201d\u00a0 The district court found that a\u00a0person of ordinary skill would recognize the benefits of adding a vent as allegedly taught in the prior art.\u00a0 The district court concluded that\u00a0there was\u00a0no triable issue of material fact on obviousness for the asserted claims of the patents-in-suit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit summarized the role of motivation to the obviousness determination:<\/p>\n

\u201cA party seeking to invalidate a patent on obviousness grounds must demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence that a skilled artisan would have been motivated to combine the teachings of the prior art references to achieve the claimed invention, and that the skilled artisan would have had a reasonable expectation of success in doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Federal Circuit explained that determining “motivation” is a flexible inquiry, and the motivation is not required to be found in any particular prior art reference.\u00a0 While Hospira pointed to benefits of venting described in the prior art,\u00a0 and in the written description of the patents in suit, Ivera pointed to evidence (Declarations from the inventors of the prior art patents) \u00a0that the conventional wisdom among those skilled in the art was that disinfecting caps should be fluid tight.\u00a0 The Federal Circuit agreed that record evidence establishes a genuine dispute over whether a person of ordinary skill would be motivated to add a vent to a prior art disinfecting caps.<\/p>\n

Ivera succeeded in creating a factual dispute by showing what members of the prior art actually believed at the time of the invention, providing declarations from the named inventors of two of the prior art references, both of whom explained that their goal was to provide a fluid tight seal, not venting.\u00a0 Although the statements of an inventor are not controlling as to the content of a patent application,\u00a0Hospira did\u00a0not challenge that the inventor was a person of ordinary skill in the art.<\/p>\n

Ivera shows the value of\u00a0presenting\u00a0an accurate picture of the state of the art, and those of ordinary skill working in it, to combat the tendency of hindsight to make simple inventions appear to be inevitable.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Ivera Medical Corp. v. Hospira, Inc., [2014-1613, 2014-1614] (September 8, 2015), the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s\u00a0summary judgment of invalidity of U.S. Patent\u00a0Nos.\u00a07,780,794, 7,985,302, and 8,206,514, directed to a medical implement cleaning device.\u00a0 One embodiment of the device … 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":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obviousness"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","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=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}