Door Closed On Petitioner Who Failed To Prove Analogous Art, PTAB Litigation Blog
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A PTAB panel recently denied IPR institution where one of the asserted prior art references was non-analogous and thus the POSITA would not have made the proposed § 103 combination. The Chamberlain Group, LLC v. Overhead Door Corp., IPR2022-00842, Paper 9 at 37 (PTAB Oct. 25, 2022) (“Decision”). Petitioner alleged that several claims of U.S. Patent No. 9,869,120—directed to the pairing of wireless transmitters for garage doors—were obvious over Fitzgibbon (U.S. 5,751,224) and Romine (U.S. 8,639,240). Fitzgibbon related to garage door systems that received encrypted radio frequency transmissions to identify an authorized user. Id. at 11. Romine, however, related to wirelessly programming devices during manufacture, “regardless of technology.” Id. at 14-15. Petitioner alleged that it would have been obvious to use Romine’s controller to wirelessly transmit authorization codes to Fitzgibbon’s garage door opener (id. at 32), but failed to address how Romine was analogous art eligible for the obviousness analysis (id. at 37).
