Bluecatbio Ma Inc. v. Yantai Ausbio Laboratories Co., Ltd.

N OTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.
United States Court of Appeals
for the Federal Circuit
______________________
BLUECATBIO MA INC.,
Appellant
v.
YANTAI AUSBIO LABORATORIES CO., LTD.,
Appellee
______________________
2022-1450
______________________
Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark
Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. PGR2020-
00051.
______________________
Decided: April 12, 2023
______________________
MICHAEL N. RADER, Wolf Greenfield & Sacks, PC, New
York, NY, argued for appellant. Also represented by EMMA
L. F RANK, N ATHAN R. SPEED, Boston, MA.
J ASON M ITCHELL SHAPIRO, Devlin Law Firm LLC, Wil-
mington, DE, argued for appellee. Also represented by
MARK J AMES D EBOY , Edell Shapiro and Finnan,
Gaithersburg, MD.
______________________
Case: 22-1450 Document: 39 Page: 1 Filed: 04/12/2023

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BLUECATBIO MA INC. v.
YANTAI AUSBIO LABORATORIES CO., LTD.
2
Before L OURIE, T ARANTO, and STARK, Circuit Judges.
L OURIE, Circuit Judge.
BlueCatBio MA Inc. (“BlueCat”) appeals from a final
written decision of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”) holding that
claims 1, 3−5, 7, 10−12, and 14−20 of U.S. Patent
10,338,063 had not been shown to have been unpatentable
as anticipated or rendered obvious in view of the asserted
prior art. BlueCatBio MA Inc. v. Yantai AusBio Lab’ys Co.,
No. PGR2020-00051, 2021 WL 6338298 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 9,
2021) (“Decision”). For the following reasons, we affirm.
BACKGROUND
This appeal pertains to a post-grant review (“PGR”) in
which BlueCat filed a petition challenging various claims
of the ’063 patent directed to a centrifuge for cleaning reac-
tion vessels. Representative claim 1 is presented below:
1. A centrifuge for cleaning a reaction vessel
unit that includes at least one opening, com-
prising:
a housing including a cylindrical inner sur-
face and a drain;
a rotor disposed within the housing and in-
cluding an outmost surface, the rotor being
configured to hold the reaction vessel unit
with its at least one opening directed out-
wardly;
a motor for rotating the rotor around a rota-
tion axis in a first rotational direction to cause
liquid from the reaction vessel to be expelled
from the at least one opening onto the inner
surface of the housing;
wherein a gap is provided between the inner
surface of the housing and the outmost
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BLUECATBIO MA INC. v.
YANTAI AUSBIO LABORATORIES CO., LTD.
3
surface of the rotor, a size of the gap being
such that by rotating the rotor a wind is gen-
erated which drives the expelled liquid on the
inner surface of the housing to the drain; and
wherein a size of the gap is not less than 0.3
mm.
’063 patent, col. 23 l. 64–col. 24 l. 14 (emphasis added).
Independent claim 12 recites a method of cleaning a re-
action vessel with a centrifuge similar to that recited in
claim 1, wherein a generated wind drives the expelled liq-
uid on the inner housing surface to the drain. Id. col. 24 l.
60–col. 25 l. 12.
BlueCat petitioned for PGR, raising grounds of invalid-
ity under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and 103 in view of the public use
of a centrifuge known as the GyroWasher. Like the
claimed centrifuge, the GyroWasher comprises a rotor that
generates a wind that can drive at least some liquid off the
inner housing surface to a drain. The Board concluded,
however, that BlueCat had not met its burden to establish
unpatentability of the challenged claims because it had not
shown that the GyroWasher’s wind drove all or nearly all
of the liquid on the inner housing surface to the drain. De-
cision at *21–22.
BlueCat appealed. We have jurisdiction under
28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A) and 35 U.S.C. § 141(c).
D ISCUSSION
We review the Board’s legal determinations de novo, In
re Elsner, 381 F.3d 1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir. 2004), and the
Board’s factual findings for substantial evidence, In re
Gartside, 203 F.3d 1305, 1316 (Fed. Cir. 2000). A finding
is supported by substantial evidence if a reasonable mind
might accept the evidence as adequate to support the find-
ing. Consol. Edison Co. v. NLRB, 305 U.S. 197, 229 (1938).
BlueCat raises one issue on appeal: whether the Board
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BLUECATBIO MA INC. v.
YANTAI AUSBIO LABORATORIES CO., LTD.
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erred in construing “the expelled liquid on the inner sur-
face of the housing” to mean “all or nearly all of the liquid”
on the housing’s inner surface. Claim construction is a
question of law that we review de novo. Cybor Corp. v. FAS
Techs., Inc., 138 F.3d 1448, 1454 (Fed. Cir. 1998) (en banc).
“It is a ‘bedrock principle’ of patent law that ‘the claims of
a patent define the invention[,] which the patentee is enti-
tled . . . to exclude.’” Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303,
1312 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (quoting Innova/Pure Water, Inc. v.
Safari Water Filtration Sys., Inc., 381 F.3d 1111, 1115
(Fed. Cir. 2004)); see also Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic,
Inc., 90 F.3d 1576, 1582 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (“[W]e look to the
words of the claims themselves . . . to define the scope of
the patented invention.”).
We begin with the language of the claims. The parties
agree that “the expelled liquid on the inner surface of the
housing” driven to the drain refers to a claim limitation
that recites that rotating the rotor causes “liquid from the
reaction vessel to be expelled . . . onto the inner surface of
the housing.” Given that the claim language does not ex-
pressly contemplate that the wind drive merely a portion
of “the expelled liquid” off the inner housing surface to the
drain, we find that the claims support a construction that
includes the wind driving all of the expelled liquid from the
inner housing surface to the drain. The parties do not seem
to disagree on this particular point. Some dependent
claims, however, describe liquid that may remain on the
inner housing following the initial wind generation step.
The claims thus encompass situations in which liquid re-
mains on the inner housing following wind generation. The
question becomes: how much liquid may remain?
Dependent claims 7 and 17 contemplate “a liquid film”
or “a liquid” that the parties agreed is “residual liquid,” De-
cision at *7, which remains on the inner housing, to the
rear of the drain. Notably, these dependent claims suggest
only that there is residual liquid or a liquid film near the
drain. They do not indicate that there is any liquid that
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BLUECATBIO MA INC. v.
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remains splattered across the whole of the inner housing
surface. Rather, leaving behind a “liquid film” or “residual
liquid” near the drain suggests that nearly all of the liquid
has otherwise been driven off the inner housing. Thus, in
view of the language of the claims themselves, we agree
with the Board’s conclusion that “all or nearly all of the ex-
pelled liquid on the inner surface of the housing” is an ap-
propriate construction of “the expelled liquid on the inner
surface of the housing” that is driven to the drain by the
wind.
BlueCat suggests that such a claim construction im-
properly imports a very high level of wind-efficacy from a
preferred embodiment. We disagree, as this claim con-
struction arises from the claim language itself. That it is
consistent with an embodiment or other disclosures in the
specification does not mean it improperly imports limita-
tions from the specification. Rather, it indicates that the
construction is correct. See Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1316 (“The
construction that stays true to the claim language and
most naturally aligns with the patent’s description of the
invention will be, in the end, the correct construction.”).
Indeed, the specification confirms that even if any “re-
sidual liquid remain[s] in the housing,” the “main part” of
the liquid will not only be off the housing but down the
drain. See ’063 patent, col. 3 ll. 41−45. This is consistent
with requiring that all or nearly all of the expelled liquid
be driven off the inner housing to the drain. The specifica-
tion also makes repeated mention of removing liquid from
the inner housing to avoid cross-contamination between re-
action vessels. See id. col. 3 ll. 43−45 (removing the “main
part” of the expelled liquid “decreases the risk of any cross-
contamination enormously”); id. col. 3 ll. 58−66 (describing
“withdraw[ing] completely all liquid . . . from the interior
of the housing,” how “[t]his fluid is regarded as contami-
nating material,” and how “[a]s this contaminating mate-
rial can be completely [] withdrawn, there is no danger of
contamination”). Each of these disclosures naturally aligns
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BLUECATBIO MA INC. v.
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with the adopted “all or nearly all” construction.
BlueCat contends that the “all or nearly all” construc-
tion is indefinite. However, this constitutes a substantial
new argument on appeal. BlueCat’s contentions regarding
indefiniteness were thus forfeited. See Microsoft Corp. v.
Biscotti, Inc., 878 F.3d 1052, 1074–75 (Fed. Cir. 2017).
The Board’s finding that the GyroWasher does not
demonstrate wind driving all or nearly all of the liquid ex-
pelled on the inner surface of the housing is a fact finding
that we review for substantial evidence. Gartside, 203 F.3d
at 1316. The Board evaluated testimony from both expert
and fact witnesses, as well as experimental results and vid-
eographic evidence to determine that the GyroWasher did
not produce a wind that drove a sufficient amount of ex-
pelled liquid on the inner housing surface to the drain to
render the challenged claims invalid. In particular, the
Board looked to evidence that showed a notable amount of
liquid remaining on the GyroWasher’s inner housing sur-
face following centrifugation, as well as an experiment
demonstrating that as much as 27% of liquid expelled from
a reaction vessel did not make it into the GyroWasher’s
drain following centrifugation. Decision at *15–17, *19–20.
We find the Board’s conclusion that BlueCat failed to es-
tablish that the wind generated by the GyroWasher drove
all or nearly all of the expelled liquid on the inner housing
surface to the drain was supported by substantial evidence.
CONCLUSION
We have considered BlueCat’s remaining arguments
and do not find them persuasive. For the foregoing rea-
sons, we affirm the Board’s final written decision holding
that claims 1, 3–5, 7, 10–12, and 14–20 of the ’063 patent
were not shown to have been unpatentable in view of the
asserted prior art.
AFFIRMED
Case: 22-1450 Document: 39 Page: 6 Filed: 04/12/2023

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