{"id":11168,"date":"2020-06-20T12:42:06","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T18:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=11168"},"modified":"2020-06-22T15:53:54","modified_gmt":"2020-06-22T21:53:54","slug":"five-reference-rejection-sent-packing-by-the-federal-circuit-back-to-the-ptab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=11168","title":{"rendered":"Five-reference rejection sent packing by the Federal Circuit back to the PTAB"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>You probably read the <em>IN RE ANOVA HEARING LABS, INC.<\/em>, No. 2019-1507 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 7, 2020) opinion and saw reference to the appeal concerning a five-reference rejection:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&nbsp;It is unclear why the Board found a skilled artisan would be motivated to combine the five separate references. It is also unclear precisely what the Board was using the different references for in this five-reference rejection. <\/p><cite><em>IN RE ANOVA HEARING LABS, INC.<\/em>, No. 2019-1507 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 7, 2020)(slip opinion at page 6 ).<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>There is more to the story.  During the oral argument, Judge Moore highlighted that the rejection was a five-reference rejection and the concern that raised about hindsight bias:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/2019-1507-Excerpt-1.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>So, here&#8217;s my problem &#8212; I feel like the Board&#8217;s opinion, for me, is troubling because it&#8217;s five references with wildly differently designed hearing aids.  And, I don&#8217;t even understand really what it&#8217;s picking from some of the references that it says are missing in the primary reference. I don&#8217;t understand why it&#8217;s motivated to go to some of those references. And, I feel like there is a lot of hand-waving. <\/p><p>And, what I&#8217;m worried about is a <em>five<\/em>-reference rejection is the hindsight bias concern of just picking and choosing elements from lots of different random prior art and saying they work together. But here it&#8217;s even worse than that because I&#8217;m not sure which elements are being chosen from some of these references.  I&#8217;m not sure what some of these references even add to the primary reference. That hasn&#8217;t been made clear to me.  So, I am a little bit veiled in my understanding of the Board&#8217;s analysis.<\/p><cite>Oral Argument of <em>IN RE ANOVA HEARING LABS, INC.<\/em>, No. 2019-1507,  beginning at 24:28.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>You can listen to the entire oral argument here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/2019-1507-11025.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>You can read the court&#8217;s opinion here: [<a href=\"https:\/\/scholar.google.com\/scholar_case?case=17624904041585803306&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=4006\">Link<\/a>].<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(I have added this sound bite to my previous &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/?p=8299\">Too Many References?<\/a>&#8221; post.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You probably read the IN RE ANOVA HEARING LABS, INC., No. 2019-1507 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 7, 2020) opinion and saw reference to the appeal concerning a five-reference rejection: &nbsp;It is unclear why the Board found a skilled artisan would be motivated to combine the five separate references. It is also unclear precisely what the Board [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11168"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11168"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11190,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11168\/revisions\/11190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.717madisonplace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}