Caterpillar Scores Wins in Road Milling IP Fight at Fed. Circ.

On February 10, 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in favor of Finnegan client Caterpillar, reviving Caterpillar’s bid to amend a road milling machine patent challenged by Wirtgen at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). The Federal Circuit ruled that the PTAB erred in finding Caterpillar’s proposed substitute claims to be obvious based on a prior patent known as Panoushek. Caterpillar argued that Panoushek’s method did not disclose a recall function using unique identifiers, but the PTAB ruled that Panoushek’s method did not "nullify" the fact that it used the identifiers to recall the parameters. On appeal, the Federal Circuit sided with Caterpillar, stating that the board applied an incorrect claim construction when evaluating the patentability of the proposed substitute claims. The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the case back to the PTAB.

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