IP Law Daily, PATENT—Fed. Cir.: Rejection of laundry bleach patent upheld, (Jun 6, 2022)
Organizations Mentioned:United States Patent and Trademark Office
By George Basharis, J.D.
Substantial evidence supported the PTAB’s affirmance of the examiner’s rejection of the claimed methods as anticipated by prior art.
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not err in finding that certain claims in an application to patent products and methods for removing stains from clothing using a hypochlorite bleach solution were invalid as obvious in light of prior art, according to the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit. Although the existing patent described combining sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide in certain weights rather than the claimed method using ratios of the two compounds, the court found the distinction did not matter because the resulting compositions of laundry bleach were the same (In re Taylor, June 2, 2022, per curiam).
In 2015, U.S. Patent Application No. 14/971,878 (the ’878 application) was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office describing products and methods for removing stains from clothing using a bleach compound that was purportedly less damaging to textiles than previously known bleach compositions. The claimed method involved combining sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide in certain ratios to improve whiteness and fabric safety. The ratios were determined empirically by testing various bleach solutions containing varying ratios of two sodium compounds.
The examiner rejected the application, finding the claims of the ’878 application were anticipated by prior art, and the Board affirmed. The prior art described various bleach compositions containing sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide in varying weights rather than ratios. However, adding the two sodium compounds in varying weights described by the prior art resulted in bleach compositions within the range of ratios claimed by the ’878 application.
On appeal, the applicant argued the Board’s affirmance of the examiner’s rejection was not supported by substantial evidence because the ratio values to formulate laundry bleach with improved fabric safety was not known in the prior art. According to the applicant, the prior art disclosed first creating a bleach solution with varying weights of sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide and then calculating the ratio values of the two sodium compounds after the quantity of the two compounds was already known.
The court rejected the argument, finding substantial evidence supported the examiner’s decision because bleach compositions in the prior art were within the claimed range of the ’878 application. The court explained that whether a bleach product was created by adding certain ratios of sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide or by combining the two compounds by varying weights to remove stains was a “distinction without a difference.” The bleach products were the same. Similarly, the method claims of the ’878 application were anticipated by the prior art, the court said. The prior art’s expression of the amounts of the essential sodium compounds as a weight percentage rather than as a ratio of weight percentages also was a distinction without a difference, according to the court. The court noted that just as the applicant did, the inventors of the prior art performed an experiment with various quantities of sodium hydroxide and tested stain removal and fabric safety of each resulting composition.
The Case is No. 21-1613.
Attorneys: Lawnie H. Taylor, pro se. Daniel Kazhdan for the USPTO.
Cases: Patent FedCirNews