After Ten Years of Litigation and Three Appeals, Claims for Semiconductor Wafer Tracking Are Deemed Obvious

Case: Asyst Technologies Inc. v. Emtrak Inc., Fed. Cir. No. 07-1554 (10/10/08)

The One Sentence Summary: On the third appeal of a case involving patents for tracking semiconductor wafers through a manufacturing process, the panel affirmed the district court's finding on a judgment as a matter of law that the asserted claims were obvious in light of the test announced in the Supreme Court's KSR decision.



Federal Circuit Holdings:

• The substitution of a multiplexer for an electrical bus found in the prior art was obvious because multiplexers and buses were the two common ways for connecting and transmitting signals.
  
• The objective indicia of nonobviousness found by the jury — commercial success, long-felt need, and industry praise - were not linked to the features not disclosed by the prior art. Thus, the commercial success did not indicate that the invention was not obvious.
• The district court properly allowed defendant to introduce new invalidity defenses after the claim scope was interpreted by the Federal Circuit in a prior appeal.