Background
Slingshot Printing LLC appealed a final written decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which found claims one through six and eight through twenty of United States Patent Number seven, two hundred ninety thousand eight hundred sixty-four unpatentable under Section one thousand three of Title thirty-five of the United States Code. Canon U.S.A., Inc. and Canon Inc. had filed an inter partes review petition challenging the patent, disputing the meaning of the limitation ‘physically separated proximal to the bondpad.’ The Board adopted Canon’s construction and concluded the claims were obvious in light of prior art references including Benjamin, Benjamin, and Childers.
The court’s reasoning
The court reviewed the Board’s claim construction de novo and its factual findings for substantial evidence. The court agreed with the Board that the relevant reference point for the limitation was the end of the trace rather than the heater arrays, as nothing in the claims or specification required a comparison to other structures. Regarding the substantial evidence challenge, the court found that the Board relied on multiple factually supported grounds, including prior art and expert testimony, to determine that a skilled artisan would understand the bondpad location. The court noted that patent figures need not be to scale and that a basic visual examination of relative distances is permissible under established case law.
We agree with the Board that the relevant reference point is the ‘end of the trace.’
Decision, 2024 WL 3608171, at *5
What it means going forward
The affirmation upholds the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s determination that the challenged patent claims are unpatentable, effectively invalidating the patent rights asserted by Slingshot Printing LLC for the specified heater chip technology.