Citing KSR, the court reminds us here of the importance of recognizing the role of common knowledge and common sense in determining obviousness. In particular, a claimed invention that merely conforms to industry standards is likely to be found obvious as being nothing more than the “combination of familiar elements according to known methods,” “each performing the same function it had been known to perform,” “yield[ing] predictable results.”
Background / Facts: The patent on appeal here from reexamination at the PTO is directed to a partitioning apparatus for refrigerated trucks that includes panels independently mounted on the ceiling of a shipping container which can be separately moved along the length of the container for positioning, or raised and stowed against the ceiling. Although the primary reference employed side-stowage rather than overhead stowage, the latter is the preferred method in the industry.
Issue(s): Whether it would have been obvious to modify the primary reference to employ overhead stowage to conform to industry standards even though the primary reference already provides a different solution for stowing the panels.
Holding(s): Yes. “Once it is established that a prevalent, perhaps even predominant, method of stowing a bulkhead panel was to raise it to the ceiling, it is hard to see why one of skill in the art would not have thought to modify [the primary reference] to include this feature – doing so would allow the designer to achieve the other advantages of the [cited] assembly while using a stowage strategy that was very familiar in the industry.” Thus, “[b]y narrowly focusing on the four prior-art references cited by the Examiner and ignoring the additional record evidence … cited to demonstrate the knowledge and perspective of one of ordinary skill in the art, the Board failed to account for critical background information that could easily explain why an ordinarily skilled artisan would have been motivated to combine or modify the cited references to arrive at the claimed inventions. As KSR established, the knowledge of such an artisan is part of the store of public knowledge that must be consulted when considering whether a claimed invention would have been obvious.”