Addressing the right of a prevailing party to appeal a favorable
decision, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dismissed
an appeal of a case from the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB or
Board) and ruled that the prevailing party could not appeal the
PTAB’s final decision based on dissatisfaction with the
PTAB’s reasoning on claim construction. SkyHawke
Technologies LLC v. Deca International Corp., Case No.
16-1325; -1326 (Fed. Cir., July 15, 2016) (Taranto, J).
SkyHawke owns a patent related to a
GPS device for use by golfers to measure the distance to a hole,
and asserted this patent against cross-appellant Deca. Deca
challenged the asserted claims in an inter partes
reexamination, and the district court stayed the case. During
reexamination, Deca argued that the claims were invalid as being
obvious in view of a combination of prior art references. The
examiner disagreed, and Deca appealed to the PTAB.
