Kramer Levin’s Federal Circuit win for client Rayonier Inc. was named to the National Law Journal’s list of 20 Notable Patent Decisions for 2011.
Rayonier had sought to patent an invention which enables the manufacture of highly absorbent personal hygiene articles, such as diapers, using dry shredded/fluffed caustic extracted wood pulp instead of more expensive chemically cross-linked fluff pulp. The Patent Examiner rejected Rayonier’s application as obvious. Rayonier appealed this rejection to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (“BPAI”), which conceded that the Examiner had misconstrued the prior art, but nevertheless sustained the Examiner based on its own different interpretation. The BPAI refused Rayonier’s hearing request and Rayonier appealed to the Federal Circuit, arguing that the BPAI’s refusal to consider evidence and argument responsive to its new rejection violated Rayonier’s due process rights under the Administrative Procedure Act. The Federal Circuit sustained Rayonier’s appeal finding that the BPAI’s reliance of the same statutory basis and the same prior art references as a patent examiner is insufficient to avoid making a BPAI rejection a new rejection when, as was here the case, the BPAI relies on new facts and rationales not previously raised by the Examiner.
The Kramer Levin team that represented Rayonier was led by Intellectual Property partner William Spatz.