Low Bar for USPTO to Show Motivation to Combine

A recent Federal Circuit case illustrates perils of trying to show that patent claims are non-obvious by arguing that references would not have been combined.  In Bosch Automotive Service Solutions. LLC v. Matal, No. 2015-1928 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 22, 2017) (non-precedential), the court affirmed a Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) finding of unpatentability, in an Inter Partes Review proceeding, of certain claims of U.S. Patent No. 6,904,796 (and, while not discussed in this post, also vacating the PTAB’s denial of the patent owner’s motion to amend certain claims).  The court agreed with the PTAB that there was a sufficient motivation to combine references to achieve a single tool for activating tire sensors where different references taught each of the various functionalities now claimed in a single tool. Independent claim 1 of the ’796 patent recites: A tool comprising a plurality of means for activating remote tire monitoring system tire sensors,…

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