Mixed outcome at CAFC in Polaris Indistries v. Arctic Cat

The outcome of Polaris v. Arctic:


For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the Board’s determination
in the 1427 Decision that claims 1–16, 20–33,
and 35 of the ’405 patent are unpatentable as obvious.
We vacate the Board’s obviousness determination as to
claims 17–19, 34, and 36–38 and remand for further
proceedings. We affirm the Board’s determination in the
1428 Decision that Arctic Cat failed to meet its burden of
demonstrating that the claims of the ’405 patent are
unpatentable.



Of an assertion of "conclusory"


Relying on these principles, we considered how the
Board should treat undisputed evidence from a patentee
that its product is the invention disclosed in the challenged
claims in PPC Broadband, writing:
When the patentee has presented undisputed evidence
that its product is the invention disclosed in
the challenged claims, it is error for the Board to
find to the contrary without further explanation.
There was no such explanation here. The Board
in its opinions did not explain why the SignalTight
connectors fail to embody the claimed features,
or what claimed features in particular are
missing from the SignalTight connectors.
(...)
Here, the Board “decline[d] to accord . . . substantive
weight” to the patentee’s undisputed evidence that its
product is the invention disclosed in certain claims because
it characterized the patentee’s evidence as “conclusory.”
1427 Decision, 2016 WL 498434, at *16. On these
facts, we conclude that the Board erred in failing to credit
Polaris’s undisputed evidence that its RZR vehicles embody
and are coextensive with claims 34 and 36–38 of the
’405 patent.