PTAB

IPR2015-00296

World Bottling Cap LLC v. Crown Packaging Technology Inc

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Low Gauge Crown Cap
  • Brief Description: The ’271 patent discloses a lightweight, low gauge crown-style bottle cap. The invention combines the use of harder-than-standard steel with one to three recessed circular grooves in the cap’s top panel, which act as structural reinforcements to stiffen the panel and allow for the use of less metal.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Frishman and Beer Packaging - Claims 1-4, 10, 12-15, and 17-20 are obvious over Frishman in view of Beer Packaging.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Frishman (Patent 8,061,544) and Beer Packaging (a 2000 industry manual).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Frishman, which discloses an "easy pull crown bottle cap," taught all the structural elements of independent claims 1, 12, and 20, including a conventional crown cap shell, a peripheral skirt with flutes, a liner, and, critically, "one or more circular depressions" on the top panel that are identical to the claimed "recessed circular groove." Petitioner contended that the only key element missing from Frishman was the specific steel hardness. This limitation—a steel shell with an average hardness greater than 62 on the 30T scale—was explicitly taught by Beer Packaging. The manual described the standard use of T-4 temper tinplate for crown caps, which has a Rockwell 30T hardness range of 58-64, thus disclosing hardness values of 63 and 64.
    • Motivation to Combine: A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine Frishman's grooved cap structure with the harder steel disclosed in Beer Packaging to pursue the well-known industry goal of "lightweighting"—reducing material costs by using thinner steel. The grooves from Frishman provide the necessary structural rigidity to compensate for the thinner gauge, while the harder steel from Beer Packaging ensures the cap maintains its performance integrity, a known trade-off in the art.
    • Expectation of Success: The combination involved applying known technologies (stiffening grooves and harder metals) for their intended purposes in the predictable mechanical art of bottle caps, leading to a high expectation of success.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Frishman, Beer Packaging, and Wagner - Claims 11 and 16 are obvious over Frishman in view of Beer Packaging and in further view of Wagner.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Frishman (Patent 8,061,544), Beer Packaging (a 2000 industry manual), and Wagner (Patent 2,233,904).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground built upon the combination of Frishman and Beer Packaging from Ground 1 to address the additional limitations of claims 11 and 16, which require the cap's liner to include compressible beads to enhance sealing. Petitioner asserted that while Frishman taught a liner, it did not explicitly show compressible beads. Wagner, a 1939 patent for a bottle cap, remedied this by expressly disclosing a cork liner and "two continuous concentric corrugations" in the cap that form "continuous concentric beads" on the underside, which press the liner against the bottle mouth to improve the seal.
    • Motivation to Combine: A POSITA seeking to improve the sealing performance of the lightweight cap design from the Frishman/Beer Packaging combination would have been motivated to incorporate the well-known feature of sealing beads from Wagner. Adding beads to a liner was a simple, known method for enhancing seals, and its application here was a predictable design choice.
    • Expectation of Success: Given that sealing beads were a conventional feature in the bottle cap art for decades, a POSITA would have had a very high expectation of success in modifying the liner of the primary combination with the beads taught by Wagner.

Ground 3: Obviousness over Frishman, Beer Packaging, and Mumford - Claims 5-9 are obvious over Frishman in view of Beer Packaging and in further view of Mumford.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Frishman (Patent 8,061,544), Beer Packaging (a 2000 industry manual), and Mumford (Patent 3,152,711).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground addressed dependent claims 5-9, which require progressively higher steel hardness values (greater than 65, 68, 71, and approximately 73 on the 30T scale). While Beer Packaging disclosed hardness up to 64, Mumford, which relates to sheet metal closure caps, explicitly taught the use of harder tinplate steel. Mumford disclosed a Rockwell hardness range of about 54-72 for its closure, expressly teaching the use of harder tempers with hardness values up to and including 72, thus meeting the limitations of claims 5-8.
    • Motivation to Combine: The motivation remained the industry trend of using thinner, harder, and thus more economical, steel for closures. A POSITA, knowing from Mumford that even harder steels function effectively for bottle closures, would have been motivated to test and implement these harder steels in the Frishman/Beer Packaging cap design to further reduce gauge and cost while maintaining structural integrity.
    • Expectation of Success: Mumford demonstrated that harder metals were successfully used in the analogous art of bottle closures. Therefore, a POSITA would have reasonably expected that applying these harder metals to a standard crown cap design would be successful.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges, including grounds substituting Beer Packaging and Wagner for Frishman as the base combination, to demonstrate that the claimed invention was a simple combination of long-known elements in the art.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner argued that claim terms should be given their plain and ordinary meaning. However, Petitioner dedicated specific argument to the term "30T scale."
  • "30T scale": Petitioner contended this term refers to the Rockwell scale for superficial hardness, a standard industry measurement for tinplate products like those used in crown caps. This construction was central to mapping the hardness disclosures in the prior art (particularly Beer Packaging and Mumford) directly onto the claim limitations.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1-20 of the ’271 patent as unpatentable.