PTAB

IPR2016-00722

Bedgear LLC v. Sheex Inc

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Bed Sheet and Method of Making the Same
  • Brief Description: The ’309 patent discloses bed sheets and methods of making them from performance fabrics containing elastic fibers like spandex. The invention addresses the challenge that high-gauge circular knitting machines cannot produce these elastic fabrics in widths sufficient for king or queen-sized beds without the fabric sagging or losing integrity; the proposed solution is to join two or more discrete fabric portions to create a finished sheet at least 90 inches wide.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Haggerty, Stewart, and Fleissner - Claims 1-5, 7, 9-21, 23, 25-32, 34, 36-50, 52, and 54 are obvious over Haggerty in view of Stewart and further in view of Fleissner.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Haggerty (Patent 7,200,883), Stewart (Application # 2005/0284189), and Fleissner (Patent 3,696,475).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the combination of Haggerty, Stewart, and Fleissner taught every limitation of the challenged claims. Haggerty disclosed bi-sectional bed sheets made by joining different fabric panels, including sheets wider than 90 inches for king-sized beds. Stewart taught the use of circular-knit elastic performance fabrics containing spandex for bedding products, made using conventional knitting methods. Petitioner asserted that the limitations in the challenged claims describing fabric properties—such as a tendency to sag or lose integrity if knit wider than 72.5 inches—were not novel features but rather well-known, inherent properties of the spandex-based fabrics taught by Stewart. Fleissner was introduced to explicitly teach these inherent properties, describing how wider knit fabrics tend to sag during finishing processes, which can distort the material and interfere with manufacturing. Thus, Haggerty provided the wide, multi-panel sheet structure, Stewart provided the specific performance fabric, and Fleissner confirmed the known challenges associated with manufacturing wide versions of such fabrics.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner contended a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine Haggerty and Stewart to create a bed sheet with improved characteristics. Haggerty expressly taught benefits of bi-sectional sheets, such as providing different warming properties on each side of the bed, and disclosed that any suitable fabric could be used. A POSITA would have been motivated to incorporate the high-performance, circular-knit elastic fabrics of Stewart into Haggerty’s multi-panel design to create a more comfortable, moisture-wicking, and elastic bed sheet. The combination would have been a simple substitution of one known fabric type for another in a known product structure to achieve predictable benefits. A POSITA would have looked to Fleissner because Stewart suggested using any desired finishing treatments, and Fleissner addressed common problems (sagging) encountered when finishing the very type of wide, sensitive knit fabrics taught by Stewart.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a reasonable expectation of success in making the proposed combination. The process involved using conventional cutting and sewing techniques, as taught by both Haggerty and Stewart, to join panels of a known fabric type. The result—a wide bed sheet made of performance fabric—was entirely predictable. The challenges of sagging and loss of integrity described in Fleissner and recited in the claims were known issues, and the claimed invention’s solution of sewing narrower panels together was a simple and well-established manufacturing technique to overcome such width limitations.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "performance man-made fiber ... having an elasticity ...": Petitioner argued for a construction of this term as "a fabric with elastic fibers (e.g., spandex) that would have too much sag and interfere with a finishing process if it is high-gauge circularly knit wider than 72.5 inches." This construction was based on the specification’s own acknowledgment that this sagging behavior was a known issue. The purpose was to frame the claim limitation not as an inventive feature, but as a recitation of a known problem inherent in prior art fabrics.
  • "a fabric that includes polyurethanepolyurea copolymer fiber ... in a proportion ...": Petitioner proposed construing this term as "a fabric with spandex fibers that would lose their integrity if the fabric is knit wider than 72.5 inches." Similar to the first construction, this aimed to establish that the claimed limitation merely described a known, inherent property of spandex-based fabrics that existed long before the patent filing date, rather than a novel and non-obvious feature.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 1-5, 7, 9-21, 23, 25-32, 34, 36-50, 52, and 54 of the ’309 patent as unpatentable.