Pride Mobility Prods. Corp. v. Permobil, Inc., No. 15-1585 (Fed. Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CasePride Mobility and Permobil compete for sales of power wheelchairs. Pride’s 598 and 343 patents disclose wheelchairs that raise their front wheels (called caster wheels) in response to torque from the chairs’ motors, enhancing the capacity of the chairs to travel stably over obstacles. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted inter partes reviews of the patents on petitions filed by Permobil, under 35 U.S.C. 311, and cancelled all claims of both patents for obviousness. The Federal Circuit reversed in part, finding that the Board misconstrued claim 7 of the 343 patent, which requires a “substantially planar” mounting plate “oriented perpendicular” to the axis of the claimed wheelchair’s drive wheel. The court affirmed as to all other claims, rejecting an argument that the Board erred in concluding that a relevant skilled artisan would have been motivated to make the claimed wheelchair by lowering the position of a pivot in a prior-art wheelchair.
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