Thursday, March 4, 2021
In an appeal from an
inter partes re-examination of a patent having both original and newly presented claims, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that a decision in earlier
inter partes reexaminations of related patents had a preclusive effect that collaterally estopped the Patent Trial and Appeal Board from making new findings on the same issue that was determined in the prior re-examinations.
SynQor, Inc. v. Vicor Corp, Case
No. 19-1704 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 22, 2021) (Hughes, J.), (Dyk, J., dissenting).
Background
In 2011, SynQor asserted several patents, including the ‘190 patent, the ‘702 patent and the ‘290 patent, against Vicor. Vicor petitioned for reexamination of the ‘190, ‘702 and ‘290 patents, arguing that the claims of the ‘190 patent were unpatentable over two references: Steigerwald and Cobos. SynQor argued that an artisan would not have combined Steigerwald and Cobos because they taught circu