PTAB

IPR2019-00388

Health Care Logistics, Inc. v. Kit Check, Inc.

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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Management of Pharmacy Kits
  • Brief Description: The ’169 patent discloses a system for managing and verifying the contents of pharmacy kits using Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. The system utilizes a reading station with built-in electromagnetic shielding to interrogate RFID-tagged items within a pharmacy kit container, comparing the scanned contents against a predefined template to identify missing, expired, or substitute items and display the verification results.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Claims 22, 25-27, 29, 30, 49, 51, 52, 54-60, 64-66, 79, 80, 82, and 85 are obvious over Andreasson in view of Sriharto, and further in view of Tethrake and Danilewitz.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Andreasson (Patent 7,175,081), Sriharto (Application # 2008/0316045), Tethrake (Patent 7,268,684), and Danilewitz (Application # 2007/0150382).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the combination of these prior art references teaches every element of the challenged claims. The asserted primary reference, Andreasson, allegedly disclosed the foundational system: a transportable medical dispensing unit with an RFID reader and antenna for tracking, monitoring, and inventorying medical products within a healthcare facility. Andreasson was said to teach checking for expiration dates and displaying verification results.
    • To this base system, Petitioner added teachings from three other references. Sriharto was cited for its express disclosure of two key features claimed in the ’169 patent: (1) an "intelligent medical material cart" that includes electromagnetic shielding to ensure the magnetic field for RFID scanning does not pass through the container, and (2) a system programmed to recommend a substitute drug when a prescribed drug is missing. Danilewitz was introduced for its explicit teaching of an RFID-based inventory system that notifies a user upon detection of a recalled product. Finally, Tethrake, which describes tracking and verifying surgical instrument kits using RFID, was offered for its overt description of verifying a "kit" of items against a predefined list or template.
    • Petitioner contended that applying the specific teachings of Sriharto (shielding and substitution), Danilewitz (recall alerts), and Tethrake (kit verification) to Andreasson’s foundational RFID inventory system would result in the system claimed by the ’169 patent.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued that a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSA) at the time would have been motivated to combine these teachings to create an improved, more commercially robust medical inventory management system. A POSA would have recognized the known benefits of electromagnetic shielding for improving RFID read reliability in enclosed containers and would have looked to a reference like Sriharto to implement it. Likewise, adding functionalities such as substitution logic (from Sriharto), recall checks (from Danilewitz), and formal kit verification (from Tethrake) were presented as predictable, common-sense improvements to enhance the safety and utility of Andreasson's basic system, using known solutions to address known problems in inventory management.
    • Expectation of Success: Petitioner asserted a high expectation of success in combining the references. The argument was based on the premise that all individual components—RFID readers, shielded containers, backend software for database comparisons, and logic for handling substitutions, expirations, and recalls—were well-understood, commercially available, and their integration was a matter of routine engineering. The combination was portrayed as the predictable assembly of known elements to achieve a predictable result.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Petitioner asserted that its invalidity grounds apply regardless of the construction adopted, but highlighted disagreements with Patent Owner from a co-pending litigation. Key disputed terms included:
    • “Template”/“Pharmacy kit template”: Petitioner proposed a broad construction: “A specification that defines the contents of a kit containing at least one segment.” The Patent Owner proposed a more limiting construction: “Predetermined specification of permissible pharmacy items that form the contents of a pharmacy kit.” The dispute centers on whether the template is a mere list of contents or a specification of only permissible items.
    • “Substitute first pharmacy item”/“substitute first medication”: Petitioner proposed that the term refers to a drug or item “identified by the template as an alternative to another drug/pharmacy item/medication.” Patent Owner argued for the term’s “Plain and ordinary meaning.” Petitioner’s construction directly links the substitution capability to the logic defined within the template.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests the institution of an inter partes review and the cancellation of claims 22, 25-27, 29, 30, 49, 51, 52, 54-60, 64-66, 79, 80, 82, and 85 of Patent 9,805,169 as unpatentable.