The oral argument in In re Ammar Al Ali, App. No. 2011-1086 (Fed. Cir. 2012) had a couple of interesting sound bites that I thought might be of interest.
In this first sound bite, Chief Judge Rader inquires how one of ordinary skill in the art would be aware of the cited art — which sounded as though it was all unpublished patent applications filed around the same time at the Patent Office by third party inventors. [Listen].
In this second sound bite, Chief Judge Rader and the Associate Solicitor for the PTO disagree over whether the viewpoint of a third-party inventor in a prior application should be treated as the viewpoint of one of “super-skill” in the art and not as the viewpoint of one of “ordinary skill” in the art. [Listen].
The court issued a Rule 36 Affirmance of the PTO’s rejection of the claim(s) at issue.
You can listen to the entire oral argument here: [Listen].