PTAB

IPR2019-00388

Health Care Logistics Inc v. Kit Check Inc

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Key Events
Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Management of Pharmacy Kits
  • Brief Description: The ’169 patent describes a system for managing pharmacy kits using radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology. The system uses an RFID reading station with an electromagnetically shielded container to verify the contents of a kit, comparing the tagged items against a pre-defined template to identify missing, extra, near-expiring, or substitute items.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Combination of RFID Inventory Systems - 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 Danilewitz and Tethrake.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Andreasson (Patent 7,175,081), Sriharto (Application # 2008/0316045), Danilewitz (Application # 2007/0150382), and Tethrake (Patent 7,268,684).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner asserted that the combination of references disclosed all limitations of the challenged independent claims (22, 49, 79) and their respective dependent claims. Petitioner argued that the prior art collectively taught every element of the claimed RFID-based pharmacy kit management system.
      • Andreasson was presented as the primary reference, teaching a foundational system for tracking and inventorying medical products. Petitioner argued Andreasson's transportable "medical dispensing unit" with its RFID reader, processor, and removable storage compartments taught the claimed "reading station" and "pharmacy kit container." The system's function of interrogating RFID-tagged items to verify inventory was argued to meet the core verification limitations.
      • Sriharto was cited to supply specific features missing from Andreasson. Petitioner pointed to Sriharto's express teaching of an "electromagnetic shielding element" within its medical cart to ensure reliable RFID scanning, directly mapping to this claim limitation. Furthermore, Sriharto was argued to teach the claimed function of identifying substitute items, as its system was programmed to recommend an alternative drug if a prescribed one was missing from the cart.
      • Danilewitz was introduced for its explicit disclosure of a pharmaceutical inventory system configured to check for and notify a user about items subject to a recall. This teaching was mapped to claim limitations requiring the system to determine if a pharmacy item is subject to a recall.
      • Tethrake, which describes tracking surgical instrument kits, was used to demonstrate the obviousness of using a "template." Petitioner argued that Tethrake's "list of items to be contained on the tray," against which scanned instruments are compared, is analogous to the claimed pharmacy kit template. Tethrake was also cited for its teaching of using a second RFID tag on the kit container (the tray itself) to identify the kit type, addressing limitations in claims requiring kit identification based on tag information.
    • Motivation to Combine (for §103 grounds): Petitioner argued a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would have been motivated to combine the teachings of these references to create a more robust and commercially effective medical inventory system. Starting with Andreasson's base system, a POSITA would logically incorporate features from the other references to solve known industry problems. For instance, a POSITA would combine Sriharto's shielding to improve scan reliability and its substitution logic to enhance inventory management flexibility. Adding Danilewitz's recall-checking feature and Tethrake's template-based verification were presented as predictable improvements to enhance safety and accuracy, using known solutions from analogous systems.
    • Expectation of Success (for §103 grounds): The petition asserted that a POSITA would have a high expectation of success in making this combination. All references operate in the same technical field of RFID inventory management, and combining their respective features for their intended, known purposes involved the application of predictable solutions that would not require undue experimentation.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • The petition dedicated a section to claim construction disputes from a related district court litigation, arguing the asserted grounds render the claims obvious regardless of which party's proposed constructions are adopted.
  • "Template"/"Pharmacy kit template": Petitioner proposed a broad construction: "a specification that defines the contents of a kit." This contrasted with the Patent Owner's proposed construction of a "Predetermined specification of permissible pharmacy items," which Petitioner contended improperly imported limitations into the claim.
  • "Substitute first pharmacy item": Petitioner's proposed construction was "Substitute refers to an available drug/pharmacy item/medication identified by the template as an alternative." Patent Owner proposed "Plain and ordinary meaning." The dispute centered on whether the template must pre-identify a specific item as an alternative.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requested the institution of an inter partes review (IPR) 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.