PTAB

IPR2017-01276

C&D Zodiac Inc v. B E Aerospace Inc

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Petition
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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Aircraft Interior Lavatory
  • Brief Description: The ’742 patent discloses an aircraft cabin enclosure, such as a lavatory, with a contoured forward wall containing one or more recesses. This design allows an adjacent passenger seat to be positioned further aft than would be possible with a conventional flat-walled lavatory, thereby increasing the usable space in the aircraft cabin.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 8 and 10-16 are obvious over the Admitted Prior Art in view of Betts

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Admitted Prior Art (“APA”) as disclosed in the ’742 patent and Betts (Patent 3,738,497).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the APA, acknowledged in Figure 1 of the ’742 patent, taught all elements of a standard aircraft lavatory with a flat forward wall positioned adjacent to a passenger seat. Betts, a 1973 patent, disclosed an aircraft coat closet with a contoured forward wall nearly identical to that shown in the ’742 patent. This contoured wall in Betts was specifically designed with a recess to accommodate the aft surface of a reclining passenger seat. Petitioner contended that combining these references met the limitations of independent claim 8, which required replacing a flat lavatory partition with a contoured one having recesses for both the seat back and the aft-extending seat support. Petitioner asserted that while Betts explicitly showed an upper recess for the seat back, adding a second, lower recess for the seat support was a predictable design choice to accommodate the next part of the seat that would interfere with the wall.
    • Motivation to Combine: The primary motivation was the efficient use of valuable cabin space, a long-standing goal in aircraft interior design. A Person of Ordinary Skill in the Art (POSITA) would combine the known space-saving contoured wall from Betts with the standard lavatory of the APA to achieve the predictable result of positioning seats further aft. This modification would increase passenger capacity or comfort. Petitioner also noted that the Board, in a previous inter partes review (IPR) of the parent ’838 patent, had already found it obvious to apply the recessed wall design of Betts to other enclosures, including lavatories.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success, as the combination involved applying a known wall design (Betts) to a known type of enclosure (APA lavatory) for its intended and predictable purpose of space optimization.

Ground 2: Claims 8 and 10-16 are obvious over the Admitted Prior Art in view of the KLM Crew Rest Document

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Admitted Prior Art (“APA”) as disclosed in the ’742 patent and the KLM Crew Rest document (publicly available from the file history of Patent 6,520,451).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: This ground relied on the same APA as the basis for a conventional flat-walled lavatory. In place of Betts, Petitioner cited the KLM Crew Rest document, which disclosed an enclosure for accessing an overhead crew rest area. Petitioner argued this enclosure was explicitly modeled on a lavatory envelope, was situated in a typical lavatory location, and featured a contoured forward wall with a recess designed to accommodate the recline of an adjacent passenger seat row. This design allowed the seats to be placed further aft. Petitioner argued this combination taught the key limitations of claim 8, including the replacement of a flat wall with a contoured one with a recess for the seat back. Similar to the Betts ground, Petitioner argued that adding a second recess for the seat support was an obvious design modification.
    • Motivation to Combine: The motivation was again the efficient use of cabin space. The KLM document provided a direct example of a lavatory-like structure being modified with a contoured wall to allow seats to be placed further aft while still being able to recline. A POSITA would have been motivated to apply this known concept to a standard lavatory (the APA) to achieve the same predictable space-saving benefit.
    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success because the KLM reference already demonstrated the application of the concept to a lavatory-style envelope. Applying this wall design to a standard lavatory was therefore a straightforward and predictable modification.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • "Reducing a volume of unusable space": Petitioner argued this phrase should be interpreted to mean "allowing an airplane seat to be positioned further aft in an aircraft than is possible with a flat wall enclosure." This construction was based on the patent’s own description of the problem solved by the invention.
  • "Recess": Petitioner proposed that under the broadest reasonable interpretation, a "recess" should be construed to mean "a wall that includes a contour in the vertical plane." This interpretation was supported by the specification’s description that the recesses cause the forward wall to be "substantially not flat in the vertical plane."

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 8 and 10-16 of the ’742 patent as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.