PTAB designates two decisions as informative regarding design choice

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Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Ex parte Spangler, Appeal No. 2018-003800 (Feb. 20, 2019)

This decision affirms the examiner’s obviousness rejection, which determined that claimed relative lengths and locations of two claimed components were a matter of obvious design choice because the specification did not suggest that the relative lengths or locations were critical to the claimed invention.

Ex parte Maeda, Appeal No. 2010-009814 (Oct. 23, 2012)

This decision reverses the examiner’s obviousness rejection, which determined that the location of a claimed component of a manufacturing apparatus was a matter of obvious design choice because moving the component to the claimed location would result in a different function than shown in the prior art.

Learn more about these informative decisions on the USPTO website.

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