PTAB

IPR2022-00599

Weber Inc v. Provisur Technologies Inc

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1. Case Identification

2. Patent Overview

  • Title: Food Article Feed Apparatus for Slicing Machine
  • Brief Description: The ’109 patent discloses a high-speed food slicing apparatus featuring a feed system with multiple, independently driven endless belt conveyors. The invention centers on using concentric drive shafts to power adjacent parallel conveyors, enabling a compact and efficient multi-lane mechanism for feeding food articles to a cutting plane.

3. Grounds for Unpatentability

Ground 1: Obviousness over Pryor and Reifenhäuser - Claims 1-12 are obvious over Pryor in view of Reifenhäuser.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Pryor (Application # 2006/0196328) and Reifenhäuser (German Publication No. DE 10018568 A1).
  • Core Argument for this Ground:
    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner argued that Pryor disclosed a high-speed food slicing machine with nearly all elements of independent claims 1 and 6. Specifically, Pryor taught a food feed system with multiple parallel lanes using pairs of upper and lower endless belt conveyors (e.g., upper conveyors 165 and 166) to advance separate food loaves toward a slicing station.
    • Motivation to Combine: While Pryor taught the multi-lane conveyor structure, it lacked the claimed concentric drive shaft arrangement. Reifenhäuser, in the same field, taught a system of four adjacent conveyors where interior conveyors were driven by shafts running concentrically within hollow shafts that drove the exterior conveyors. Petitioner contended a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) would combine Reifenhäuser's concentric drive with Pryor's system to achieve known benefits. These included space savings by nesting drive components, improved cleanliness and reliability by locating drive motors away from the food path, and simplified maintenance by consolidating motors to one side of the machine.
    • Expectation of Success: The use of concentric shafts was a well-known mechanical arrangement for transmitting power. Petitioner asserted that because Reifenhäuser provided an express teaching of this drive mechanism for the same purpose (driving adjacent conveyors in a food processing machine), a POSITA would have had a high expectation of success in applying this known technique to Pryor’s similar multi-lane conveyor system to achieve the predictable result of independent conveyor operation.

Ground 2: Obviousness over Wygal and Alotto - Claims 1-12 are obvious over Wygal in view of Alotto.

  • Prior Art Relied Upon: Wygal (Patent 5,410,954) and Alotto (WO 02/10018 A1).

  • Core Argument for this Ground:

    • Prior Art Mapping: Petitioner asserted that Wygal disclosed the basic framework of a food slicing machine with a feed apparatus comprising cooperating upper and lower endless belt conveyors. However, Wygal only depicted a single conveyor lane.
    • Motivation to Combine: Petitioner argued a POSITA would have been motivated to modify Wygal’s single-lane slicer to include multiple parallel lanes to increase throughput and efficiency, a common objective in the art. Alotto taught a system for packaging food products that used two adjacent, parallel conveyors driven independently by a concentric shaft arrangement (a "tubular sleeve 42" and a "shaft 49 housed coaxially"). A POSITA looking to implement a multi-lane version of Wygal would have looked to known methods for driving adjacent conveyors, like the advantageous concentric shaft system taught by Alotto. Adopting Alotto’s drive would provide a simpler, more compact, and more easily maintained power transmission system than Wygal's existing gearbox.
    • Expectation of Success: Alotto expressly taught the components for implementing a concentric drive. Petitioner argued that although Alotto disclosed an endless chain conveyor, a POSITA would have readily understood that the same mechanical principles for driving adjacent lanes would apply directly to an endless belt system like Wygal's, yielding the predictable result of an independently controlled, two-lane slicing machine.

  • Additional Grounds: Petitioner asserted additional obviousness challenges by adding further prior art to the primary combinations. These grounds included adding Penta (Patent 6,415,711) for its teachings on internal drive belts for lower conveyors, Lindee (Application # 2004/0055439) for its machine control logic for ending slicing, and Carey (Patent 5,481,466) for its teachings on a specific type of food article gate.

4. Key Claim Construction Positions

  • Term: "a [first/second] conveying surface on top of the [first/second] endless belt"
  • Petitioner's Position: Petitioner argued this term should be construed to mean "a conveying surface on an outer surface of the endless belt." This construction was asserted to be critical for claims reciting "upper conveyors." For an upper conveyor, the food-contacting surface is physically located below the main conveyor body, but it is on the "top" (i.e., the outer surface of the continuous loop) of the belt itself. Petitioner contended this interpretation is consistent with industry terminology and is necessary for the claims to find support in the specification.

5. Relief Requested

  • Petitioner requests institution of an inter partes review and cancellation of claims 1-17 of the ’109 patent as unpatentable.