Case: 19-2176 Document: 55 Page: 1 Filed: 11/24/2020
NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
IN RE: ASPEN AEROGELS, INC.,
Appellant
______________________
2019-2176
______________________
Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark
Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 14/446,663.
______________________
Decided: November 24, 2020
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POONGUNRAN MUTHUKUMARAN, Aspen Aerogels, Inc.,
Northborough, MA, for appellant. Also represented by
CHRISTOPHER JAMES STOW.
KAKOLI CAPRIHAN, Office of the Solicitor, United States
Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA, for appellee
Andrei Iancu. Also represented by THOMAS W. KRAUSE,
FRANCES LYNCH, FARHEENA YASMEEN RASHEED, MAUREEN
DONOVAN QUELER.
______________________
Before DYK, SCHALL, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges.
HUGHES, Circuit Judge.
Aspen Aerogels, Inc. applied for a patent on a layered
reinforced aerogel product. The examiner issued a final
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2 IN RE: ASPEN AEROGELS, INC.
rejection finding the pending claims obvious under 35
U.S.C. § 103, and the Patent Trial and Appeal Board af-
firmed. On appeal to this court, Aspen argues that the prior
art does not teach layers as required by the claims, and
that the pending claims are therefore nonobvious. Because
we conclude that the Board’s factual findings were sup-
ported by substantial evidence and because we agree with
the Board’s conclusion of obviousness, we affirm.
I
Aspen filed Patent Application No. 14/446,663 (the ’663
application) regarding layered reinforced aerogel.
Aerogels are effective insulating materials, but they
are fragile on their own, so many applications require add-
ing reinforcing structures. One way to create reinforced
aerogel is to pour a liquid form of aerogel into a fibrous ma-
terial and then dry the aerogel. The fibers inside then
strengthen the otherwise fragile structure.
The ’663 application claims a layered structure, where
one layer is fiber-reinforced aerogel and a second layer is
another fiber-containing material that may or may not be
fiber-reinforced aerogel. In this structure, the fibers of the
first layer are interlaced with the fibers of the second layer.
Claim 1 is representative:
A composite comprising at least one first ply of fi-
ber-reinforced aerogel material adjacent to at least
one second ply of fiber-containing material,
wherein fibers from the at least one first ply of fi-
ber-reinforced aerogel material are interlaced with
fibers from the at least one second ply of fiber-con-
taining material.
The examiner rejected pending claims 1–19 of the ’663
application as obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103, and the
Board affirmed.
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IN RE: ASPEN AEROGELS, INC. 3
II
The examiner found two pieces of prior art that render
the claims in Aspen’s application obvious: U.S. Patent App.
No. 2002/0094426 (Stepanian) and the English translation
of the Abstract of Japanese Patent No. 2000-080549 (Sano).
The examiner found that Stepanian, which is owned by As-
pen, teaches aerogel composites with multiple layers of fi-
ber-containing material. Stepanian teaches placing layers
of fibrous material adjacent to each other and then filling
those layers with aerogel, thereby creating an aerogel
structure that contains multiple layers of fibrous materi-
als. While the examiner found that Stepanian does not
teach interlacing the layers of fiber, the examiner deter-
mined that Sano teaches connecting fibrous materials by
interlacing fibers through a technique known as needle
punching. The examiner determined that it would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify
Stepanian’s composite by needle punching the fiber rein-
forced layer of the composite in view of Sano’s teaching,
thereby creating a composite where layers of reinforced
aerogel have interlaced fibers.
III
“Whether a claimed invention would have been obvious
is a question of law, based on factual determinations re-
garding the scope and content of the prior art, differences
between the prior art and the claims at issue, the level of
ordinary skill in the pertinent art, [and] the motivations to
modify or combine prior art[.]” Belden Inc. v. Berk-Tek
LLC,
805 F.3d 1064, 1073 (Fed. Cir. 2015). We review the
Board’s legal decisions de novo and its factual determina-
tions for substantial evidence.
Id. Substantial evidence
“means such relevant evidence as a reasonable mind might
accept as adequate to support a conclusion.” Consol. Edi-
son Co. v. N.L.R.B.,
305 U.S. 197, 229 (1938).
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4 IN RE: ASPEN AEROGELS, INC.
A
The key inquiry here is whether Stepanian teaches aer-
ogel composites with multiple layers of fiber-containing
material as determined by the examiner and the Board. As-
pen argues that this issue is a legal question of claim con-
struction that we should review de novo. Aspen contends
that the dispute is whether the meaning of the terms
“layer” and “ply” includes the structure in Stepanian: mul-
tiple sheets of fibrous material within a monolithic piece of
aerogel. We do not find Aspen’s characterization of the is-
sue persuasive. There is no formal construction of the term
“layers” that Aspen disputes. Aspen merely asserts that
the Board must have misunderstood the meaning of the
term layers if the Board thought that the prior art included
layers. Instead, we determine the issue to be a factual ques-
tion of whether the prior art teaches an undifferentiated
mass of aerogel or teaches layers of fiber-reinforced aerogel
as the Board determined. We review this issue for substan-
tial evidence. Belden
Inc., 805 F.3d at 1073.
B
There is substantial evidence that the prior art teaches
a reinforced composite material with the same layered
properties as the patent, and we find Aspen’s arguments to
the contrary unpersuasive. Based on these findings, we
agree with the Board that the pending claims are obvious.
Aspen argues that the prior art does not teach a layered
composite. In the appellant’s view, Stepanian does not in-
clude meaningful layers because the aerogel is poured over
the fibrous material at once, rather than separately over
each layer. But there is little reason to think that the dif-
ferent order of steps in Stepanian results in a different
product than the application at issue. As the examiner
stated:
Even though Stepanian refers to the resulting
structure as monolithic since the structure began
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IN RE: ASPEN AEROGELS, INC. 5
with a laminate comprising a first ply and a second
ply of fiber reinforced material, the final product
would also have a first ply and a second ply except
for now, as a result of the process, the plies each
contain fiber reinforced material aerogel material.
Ex Parte Bullock, No. 2017-009313,
2019 WL 2318893,
at *3 (P.T.A.B. May 22, 2019).
Whether layers of fibrous material are filled with aer-
ogel and then stacked or stacked and then filled with aero-
gel makes no difference if the result is the same as the
claimed composite here.
Aspen also contends the prior art does not teach the
key insight of the invention here. In the appellant’s view,
one of the key innovations is the ability to attach a layer of
fiber-reinforced aerogel material to a separate layer of dif-
ferent fiber-containing material. However, this innovation
is not captured in the claim language. Claim 1 broadly lists
a composite material where one layer is “fiber-reinforced
aerogel material” and a second layer is any “fiber-contain-
ing material.” Nothing in claim 1 or subsequent claims pre-
vents the second layer from also being fiber-reinforced
aerogel. Indeed, claim 5 is directed to a composite “wherein
the second ply of fiber-containing material comprises a fi-
ber-reinforced aerogel.” J.A. 40. Moreover, the claim is not
a product by process claim, so the allegedly inventive
method employed to reach the claimed product is of little
importance if the product itself would have been obvious to
an artisan.
C
It is undisputed that claim 1 is representative of most
of the claims, but Aspen separately argues that claims 13
and 19 narrow the patent by requiring that the “first layer”
and “second layer” have “surfaces” that are “adjacent” to
each other. In Aspen’s view, Stepanian does not teach ad-
jacent surfaces because the composite in Stepanian is one
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6 IN RE: ASPEN AEROGELS, INC.
monolithic whole. However, this argument is little more
than a restatement of Aspen’s earlier contention that
Stepanian does not teach layers. Once it is understood that
the prior art teaches stacked layers of fiber-reinforced aer-
ogel, it is also clear that these layers have surfaces that are
adjacent to each other. Further, if we were to accept As-
pen’s argument that layers in a well-integrated product
cannot have surfaces, we likely would also have to declare
that the layers in the claims at issue do not have surfaces
because they are “interlaced,” which would make claims 13
and 19 incoherent. Thus, claims 13 and 19 are obvious for
the same reasons claim 1 is obvious.
IV
The Board found persuasive evidence that the claimed
composite would have been obvious to a person skilled in
the art in light of Stepanian and Sano. The prior art
teaches a layered fiber-containing aerogel structure, and
there is a substantial evidence that an artisan would have
known to interlace the layers of fibers. We therefore agree
with the Board’s legal conclusion that claims 1–19 are in-
valid under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
AFFIRMED
