The Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's ("PTAB") determination that various claims of a patent, directed to LED technology, were unpatentable as obvious. In an ex parte reexamination, the examiner rejected the claims for obviousness based upon multiple combinations of prior-art references, and the PTAB affirmed. The Federal Circuit found no error in the PTAB's conclusion that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have had a reason to combine the prior-art references to arrive at the claims at issue. The Federal Circuit further rejected Cree's argument that the PTAB improperly discounted secondary considerations of nonobviousness such as evidence of industry praise, evidence of licensing, and evidence of commercial success. In particular, the Federal Circuit agreed with the PTAB that Cree's evidence of "industry praise" was entitled to little weight, as this praise was from researchers about their own work. The Federal Circuit further agreed with the PTAB that Cree's evidence of licensing and commercial success did not support nonobviousness because Cree had not sufficiently established a nexus between the proffered evidence and the claimed invention.
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