PTAB

IPR2019-01055

Precision Planting LLC v. Deere & Co

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Petition
petition

1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Seeding Machine with Controlled Seed Delivery
  • Brief Description: The ’955 patent discloses an agricultural seeding machine designed to improve seed spacing accuracy, particularly at high speeds. The invention uses a seed delivery apparatus with an endless member (e.g., a brush belt) and a rotating wheel that cooperate to form a "nip," which actively controls seeds as they are transferred from a seed meter to the ground, preventing uncontrolled gravity drops.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Hedderwick, Benac, and Koning - Claims 1-8, 10, 12-17, 19-20 are obvious over Hedderwick in view of Benac and Koning.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Hedderwick (UK Published Application No. GB 2,057,835A), Benac (French Published Application No. 2,414,288), and Koning (Patent 4,193,523).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that the prior art collectively discloses all elements of the challenged claims. Hedderwick, published nearly 30 years prior to the ’955 patent’s priority date, provided the foundational system: a precision seeder with a vacuum seed meter (a rotating disc with apertures) that transfers seeds to an endless belt with fins contained within a housing. However, Hedderwick's system allowed seeds to move freely within cells on the belt, leading to imprecise spacing.

    • To remedy this, a POSITA would have incorporated two known technologies. First, Koning taught replacing a standard conveyor with a driven brush belt whose bristles actively "hold" seeds "till the very last moment" to ensure "regular distribution" in the furrow. Petitioner asserted that substituting Hedderwick’s finned belt with Koning’s superior brush belt was a simple, obvious modification to improve seed control.

    • Second, Benac addressed a well-known problem in vacuum seed meters like Hedderwick’s: seeds becoming jammed in the apertures even after the vacuum is released. Benac taught using a rotating "paddle wheel" to mechanically sweep the apertures and reliably dislodge seeds at the release point. Petitioner argued that incorporating Benac's paddle wheel into Hedderwick’s system was an obvious solution to a known problem. The combination of Benac's paddle wheel (a "rotating wheel") and Koning's brush belt (an "endless member"), positioned at the seed hand-off point in Hedderwick's housing, would inherently form the claimed "nip" through which seeds pass.

    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner asserted that a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine these references to solve the shared, long-standing problem of inaccurate seed spacing. All three references are in the same agricultural planting field. A POSITA seeking to improve Hedderwick's precision seeder would have been motivated to use Koning's brush belt for better seed control and Benac's paddle wheel for reliable seed release from the meter. Koning and Benac presented their respective technologies as known "tools in the POSITA's toolbox" for achieving the exact goals of the ’955 patent.

    • Expectation of Success: A POSITA would have had a high expectation of success. The proposed combination involved integrating well-understood, purely mechanical components into a known system to achieve predictable improvements in performance. The functionality of each component (Hedderwick's meter, Koning's belt, Benac's wheel) was well-established and their integration presented no technical hurdles.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • nip: Petitioner argued this term should be given its plain and ordinary meaning: a place where two bodies come together. In the context of the patent and the proposed prior art combination, the "nip" is the location where Benac’s rotating paddle wheel and the bristles of Koning’s endless brush belt come together to transfer a seed from the seed meter to the delivery apparatus. This construction is central to arguing that the combination of references meets the limitations of independent claim 1.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review (IPR) and cancellation of claims 1-8, 10, 12-17, and 19-20 of the ’955 patent as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. §103.