CAFC Affirms District Court Dismissal of Pro Se Inventor’s Procedural and Patent Claims

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday affirmed a number of district court orders against inventor Urvashi Bhagat, whose patent application was rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Bhagat’s U.S. patent application No. 13/877,847 covers orally-delivered nutritional formulations containing omega-6 fatty acids and antioxidants. The application was filed in 2013 and the USPTO examiner rejected all claims as obvious, two claims as lacking written description, several other claims as indefinite and others for improper dependency. On appeal to the PTAB, the Board summarily affirmed the dependency and indefiniteness rejections, affirmed the obviousness rejection on the merits and reversed the written description rejection. Bhagat then appealed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, claiming the USPTO erroneously rejected her patent claims and asking for damages due to the Office’s bad faith and for taking her property. The district court granted the USPTO’s motion to dismiss all claims except the patent claims in July 2021, but struck her request for a jury trial.

During the district court proceedings, the USPTO argued that all of the pending claims were ineligible for patenting under Section 101 and certain claims were also obvious. The district court ultimately agreed and found that “the Application claims recited a combination of nutrients naturally present in almonds, with some of the claims describing the same dosages of omega-6 fatty acids, polyphenols, and phytosterols contained in almonds” at Alice step one and, at Alice step two, that “all the remaining limitations recited well-known activities such as conventional packaging practices, crushing almonds into a powder, and ‘administering,’ ‘determining,’ ‘selecting,’ and ‘preparing’ steps.”

Bhagat appealed to the CAFC, challenging a number of the the district court’s orders. The court had asked that she file paper motions to request relief from the court, denied her request for the enlargement of discovery, denied her challenge to the admissibility of expert testimony, and denied her leave to file a second amended complaint. Bhagat also alleged due process violations because the judges wouldn’t recuse themselves. She further challenged the district court’s dismissal of her damages, takings, and misconduct claims and its refusal to grant her a jury trial, as well as the denial of her motion to strike and the grant of the USPTO’s motion for summary judgment.

In its discussion, the CAFC said Bhagat had failed to demonstrate that the district court abused its discretion or violated due process, noting that her request to extend discovery was filed after the close of discovery; that the court’s rules requiring written motions rather than electronic filings did not violate due process and are not in conflict with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; that Bhagat’s challenges to the expert’s testimony went to weight, rather than admissibility, and therefore the court’s denial of her motion to exclude it was proper; that her motion for leave to file a second amended complaint was delayed and thus properly denied; and that her arguments for the judges to recuse themselves, which she raised for the first time on appeal, were insufficient to establish that the judges were biased.

As to dismissal, the CAFC said the district court correctly dismissed Bhagat’s Takings Claim for lack of jurisdiction and found that her arguments that the district court erred in dismissing her claims for misconduct, constitutional violations and mandamus relief merely amounted to attempts to point to her Amended Complaint to show that “she had a constitutional right to have her Application issue as a valid patent and that the PTO’s refusal to do so was a result of its bad faith and misconduct.” The CAFC said these portions of the complaint “merely critique the PTO for rejecting her claims and the PTAB for maintaining most of those rejections, and at no point does Bhagat identify specific false statements or actions of misconduct from the PTO or cite to any portion of the Constitution to support the PTO’s alleged violation of her constitutional rights.”

As far as the grant of summary judgment, the Federal Circuit found that there were no disputed issues of material fact that contradicted the ineligibility or obviousness findings because Bhagat’s arguments against these findings amounted to “conclusory statements”. The CAFC briefly affirmed the district court’s eligibility analysis and found that the district court did not err in granting summary judgment on either ineligibility or obviousness.

Bhagat said in an email sent to IPWatchdog that she plans to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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