, the Federal Circuit determination as to whether a reference is analogous art to a claimed invention requires, in part, an identification and comparison of the purposes or problems to which the reference and the invention relate, from the perspective of a person having ordinary skill in the art (“PHOSITA”).
Donner requested IPR of a patent owned by Pro Stage relating to a mounting board for guitar effects pedals. In its IPR request, Donner asserted that the patent was obvious, in part, in view of a prior art reference related to electrical relay structures (“Mullen”). The PTAB rejected Donner’s obviousness challenges on the ground that Donner failed to demonstrate that Mullen was analogous art. Donner appealed.
In 2017, Twitter, Inc. (“Twitter”) filed two petitions requesting
inter parties review (“IPR”) of U.S. Patent No. 9,083,997 (“the ’997 patent”), with the first petition directed to claims 1-19 and the second petition directed to claims 20-35. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”) issued two substantially similar Final Written Decisions (IPR2017-00829, IPR2017-00830) that found all claims of the ’997 patent unpatentable as obvious. The ’997 patent’s assignee, VidStream LLC (“VidStream”), appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“the CAFC”) on the grounds that the primary art reference cited by Twitter and relied on by the Board did not qualify as prior art.