Intuitive issued 28 infringement claims against Ethicon’s patent for a surgical robot tool. A Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled Feb. 18, that a third of Ethicon’s claims in the patent were unpatentable but allowed the majority of them.
The board said Intuitive failed to prove that a mechanical engineer with past experience would’ve thought to take a surgical tool with a shiftable drive system and combine it with a robot.
The board wrote, “Petitioner’s proposal in that regard appears rooted in the bias of hindsight rather than based on what a skilled artisan would have gleaned from the teachings of the prior art.”
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