UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
`
`____________
`
`BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
`
`____________
`
`AUTOLIV ASP INC.; NIHON PLAST CO., LTD.;
`NEATON AUTO PRODUCTS MANUFACTURING, INC.;
`TAKATA CORPORATION; TK HOLDINGS INC.;
`TOYODA GOSEI CO., LTD.; HYUNDAI MOBIS CO., LTD.;
`MOBIS ALABAMA, LLC; and MOBIS PARTS AMERICA, LLC,
`Petitioner,
`
`v.
`
`AMERICAN VEHICULAR SCIENCES, LLC,
`Patent Owner.
`_____________
`
`Case IPR2016-01794
`Patent 9,043,093 B2
`____________
`
`Record of Oral Hearing
`Held: December 6, 2017
`____________
`
`
`Before TREVOR M. JEFFERSON, JENNIFER MEYER CHAGNON, and
`SCOTT C. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges.
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`Case IPR2016-01794
`Patent 9,043,093 B2
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`APPEARANCES:
`
`ON BEHALF OF THE PETITIONER:
`
`
`SHRI ABHYANKAR, ESQUIRE
`Alston & Bird LLP
`1201 West Peachtree Street
`Atlanta, GA 30309
`
`
`
`ON BEHALF OF THE PATENT OWNER:
`
`
`GREGORY GONSALVES, ESQUIRE
`Gonsalves Law Firm
`2216 Beacon Lane
`Falls Church, VA 22043
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`
`
`The above-entitled matter came on for hearing on Wednesday,
`December 6, 2017, at 3:05 p.m., at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office,
`Madison Building East, 600 Dulany Street, Alexandria, Virginia, before
`Walter Murphy, Notary Public.
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`Case IPR2016-01794
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`P R O C E E D I N G S
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`JUDGE CHAGNON: Please be seated. Welcome back, everyone.
`This is the final hearing for IPR2016-01794 related to U.S. 9,043,093.
`Counsel, could you please introduce yourselves for the record and let us
`know who’ll be presenting today. Petitioner. Please speak at the
`microphone. I just want everyone to hear you. Thank you.
`MR. ABHYANKAR: This is Shri Abhyankar on behalf of Petitioner
`Autoliv ASP and the other Petitioners in this IPR, and with me is Wes
`Achey of Alston & Bird.
`JUDGE CHAGNON: Thank you.
`DR. GONSALVES: And my name is Dr. Gregory Gonsalves
`representing the Patent Owner American Vehicular Sciences.
`JUDGE CHAGNON: Thank you everyone. The format for this
`hearing will remain the same as in the previous hearing. Each party has 30
`minutes. Either party have questions before we get started? Okay, great.
`Petitioner would you like to reserve any time?
`MR. ABHYANKAR: Five minutes will be enough. Thank you.
`JUDGE CHAGNON: Thank you. Whenever you’re ready you can
`go ahead and begin.
`MR. ABHYANKAR: Your Honors, we have our copies of the slides
`for you, for your convenience. Thank you. May it please the Board, this
`IPR boils down to a single issue, whether the ’093 patent is entitled to claim
`priority to December 12, 1995, the date the ’247 application was filed. The
`answer is no. The ’247 application does not provide written description
`support for every single element of the claimed invention of the ’093.
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`Apart from its arguments concerning priority, AVS has not disputed
`the 13 grounds of rejection presented by Petitioners and the reason for this is
`simple. The prior art clearly discloses all the limitations and AVS has no
`argument in response.
`We turn to slide 2. My presentation will focus on four areas. First,
`I’ll briefly describe the ’093 patent and the invention, and the claim
`limitations that are relevant to the priority issue. Second, I will discuss the
`strict legal standard that AVS must meet in order to satisfy its burden on
`priority, a burden on which it cannot and has not met. Third, I will address
`AVS’s priority arguments and detail how each failed to support AVS’s
`claimed priority. And finally, assuming there will be time, I’ll show you
`some of the clear disclosures of the prior art and how they meet each and
`every limitation of the claims which will demonstrate why AVS chose not to
`substantively dispute them.
`As we all know, the ’093 patent at a high level relates to a single side
`curtain air bag for vehicles. It’s intended to provide protection for both rear
`and front seat occupants and it’s depicted here in figure 91 which was
`included in the filing of the ’093 patent in 2007 as you can see here on slide
`3, Judge Moore. And remember figure 91, we’ll see it again in a little bit.
`The claims require very specific configuration of the side curtain air
`bag, looking at slide 4. As relevant to the priority issue, the claim requires a
`single air bag extending across at least two seating positions of a passenger
`compartment of a vehicle and it also includes wherein the single air bag has
`a plurality of compartments for receiving the gas and where those
`compartments are in flow communication with each other. These last two
`limitations we’re going to refer to as the flow communication limitations and
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`they’re pretty important, and AVS thought so too because they added them
`in a March 11, 2013 amendment to get around the prior art. They
`incorporated them into the independent claims as you see here on slide 5.
`The ’093 patent has a reasonably convoluted priority chain. As you
`can see here on slide 6, the ’093 patent was filed in 2007 and it purports to
`claim priority all the way back to December 12 of 1995 through a series of
`continuation-in-parts applications and as you can see here, we’ll talk about
`on the left side here the 2004 application that will become relevant later
`because that is the first time we see AVS, or we see the Patent Owner
`introduce this concept of flow communication. We don’t see it anywhere
`else in the applications leading up to that date.
`Over this course of 12 years, there’s a series of CIPs, of course.
`They’re adding new matter at every step of the way. When the ’247
`application was filed the specification included nine figures and thirty four
`columns. By 2007 the specification had over 160 figures and 192 columns,
`so that demonstrates the amount of new matter that was being added over the
`course of this 12 year period.
`Slide 7, as we discussed earlier AVS does not substantively dispute
`the disclosures of the prior art. Slide 7 shows the arguments that were made
`during briefing which of course are only that the references are not prior art
`because the ’093 patent is entitled to December 12 of 1995 date.
`So I’ll briefly address the legal standard which would control this
`issue and the parties don’t really dispute what that standard is. As you can
`see here on slide 9 it is elementary patent law that patent application is
`entitled to the benefit of a filing date of an earlier filed application only if
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`there is 112 support in the earlier application and to satisfy this written
`description requirement, the missing matter must necessarily be present.
`We move to slide 10. The Federal Circuit said this requires that the
`written description actually or inherently disclose the claimed elements, and
`slide 11, let’s talk about inherency because I think that’s important to this
`issue. AVS cannot point to any express disclosure of the limitations in the
`’247 application of the claimed configuration so they rely on inherency and
`inherency cannot -- inherency is a strict standard and it’s hard to meet. The
`Federal Circuit has said that to establish inherency it must necessarily be
`present. It cannot be established by probabilities or possibilities and the fact
`that it may result from a given set of circumstances is not sufficient.
`So what that means for our purposes is inherency, AVS can’t simply
`claim that the concept of flow communication, for example, could have been
`disclosed because it was either obvious or it was one way of doing it. That’s
`not sufficient to meet the inherency standard that the Federal Circuit has told
`us requires necessity, requires it to be the only way and they cannot and they
`have not met that standard, and we’ll talk about that in a little bit.
`So let’s briefly go over AVS’s arguments. I’ve categorized them into
`three different buckets, if you will. The first argument, I’m sorry Judge
`Moore, we’re going to start on slide 12 and we’re going to go to slide 13.
`The first argument is that the figure 4 knee air bag in the ’247 necessarily
`discloses a side air bag with a plurality of compartments and flow
`communication. We’ll address why that’s not right. Second, they take a
`number of different embodiments and disclosures separate and distinct,
`combine them together in hindsight to recreate the claimed invention and
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`also to suggest that by virtue of this combination there’s a disclosure of flow
`communication. That’s also incorrect.
`And finally, AVS argues that flow communication between
`compartments would have been obvious to a PHOSITA in 1995. Again,
`first that’s irrelevant under the law and secondly it wouldn’t matter because
`it doesn’t actually disclose flow communication in the ’247.
`So let’s start with figure 4. The figure 4 knee air bag is shown here at
`the bottom of slide 15. The only description of the figure 4 knee air bag is
`here and all it says is that it’s a knee air bag and that it can protect the knees.
`It doesn’t say anything about compartments and it doesn’t say anything
`about flow communication, not to mention that we’re talking here about a
`frontal knee air bag, not a side air bag.
`On slide 16, here’s a blowup of the knee air bag and so AVS’s
`position is that these lines here represent compartments. Well, Dr. Rouhana
`addressed this issue in his declaration and he said, and we’ll get to this in a
`second, there is no way to tell whether those lines are multiple compartments
`because 1) the patent doesn’t tell us what those lines are and 2) those lines
`could be a number of different things, and on slide 17 Dr. Rouhana testified
`when looking at the figure that it’s impossible to tell whether there’s
`compartments or not, much less if they’re in flow communication.
`On slides 18 and 19, Dr. Rouhana provides a number of different
`things those lines could be. They could be contour lines. They could be sew
`lines. They could be pleats. They could be wrinkles. Slide 19. They could
`even be in a pleat design to match the design on the seat. If you look here,
`those lines look very similar to the lines on the air bag.
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`Now, on slide 20 AVS’s position is that if you see here on the bottom
`there’s a little white hole on the knee air bag, and so what AVS’s expert says
`is well, I see this vent hole. It’s a vent hole and I know that in order to have
`a vent hole with multiple compartments, it would have to be in flow
`communication. That’s essentially what their argument is. Well, that can’t
`be right either because first, there’s nothing in the patent that talks about
`vent holes or their required use for multiple compartments in flow
`communication. Secondly, well there’s two things wrong with that
`argument. First that presupposes that there’s compartments there, which of
`course there aren’t, but let’s assume there are. Dr. Rouhana said even if
`they’re multiple compartments there could be a number of different ways for
`the system to absorb and distribute the energy that the vent hole would be
`used for according to AVS, including having multiple vents. You know, a
`vent going -- a vent that’s out of view. You could design the fabric to
`stretch in such a way to be able to do that. You could have brackets. So
`there are a number of different ways you could have multiple compartments
`that are not in flow communication with each other absorb the energy
`necessary without the vent hole, and that’s on slide 22.
`Finally, it’s important to note that AVS has repeatedly distinguished
`frontal and side air bag systems, as this Board is aware. I couldn’t put all of
`their statements during prosecution up here, but I’ve picked a few. From
`slide 23, from what they’ve told the Patent Office is that it would make no
`sense to Applicant’s expert or to one of ordinary skill in the art to use a
`frontal air bag system as the basis for any side air bag system, and what
`they’re trying to tell the Board here is that simply by looking at figure 4 and
`its knee air bag, you would necessarily know that 1) there’s multiple
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`compartments, 2) that they’re in flow communication, and 3) that you could
`take that configuration and then turn it into a side air bag configuration.
`Well those two positions, the positions they took here and the positions they
`are taking here are irreconcilable.
`Now their second argument on slide 24 is combining a number of
`different embodiments, including figure 4 to try to in hindsight recreate the
`claims, and they rely heavily on slide 25 on this generic air bag description
`in the ’247, and all this description is referring to an air bag module 100
`which deploys from the ceiling in the passenger compartment. It’s not
`talking about a side air bag configuration. It’s not talking about what the
`claims of the ’093 patent are actually directed to and it references the term
`air bag and says that it could be a single air bag, it could be a plurality of air
`bags or it could be a single air bag having a plurality of compartments which
`deploy in concert to protect the occupant. That’s all it says. It doesn’t say
`anything about flow communication and it doesn’t provide any information
`about a system, a claimed configuration of a single side curtain air bag with
`all of the elements of claim 1 and the other claims in the ’093 patent.
`On slide 26 this is effectively their argument -- simply because the
`specification defines the term air bag to encompass an air bag with a
`plurality of compartments, any of the air bags disclosed in the priority
`applications could be a single air bag having a plurality of compartments.
`So they’ve taken figure 1, they’ve taken figure 4, they’ve taken figure 5 and
`they think they got the claim. But they don’t because 1) it’s improper to
`selectively choose in hindsight different embodiments and different
`disclosures to try to recreate the claims and, 2) even combining all of these
`things we still don’t have flow communication. It’s not expressly or
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`inherently disclosed, even if you combine it the way AVS wants you to on
`slide 26.
`Now, the other point to make is there is a disclosure of a plurality of
`compartments but that is not sufficient for an inherent disclosure of flow
`communication because a plurality of compartments by themselves does not
`equal flow communication, and Mr. Nranian told me that during deposition.
`In referencing the air bag description that we talked about earlier, he said
`well, the air bag could have a plurality of compartments in flow
`communication, but it could not. That necessarily doesn’t meet the
`necessary standard for inherency because he’s saying it’s not the only way.
`He’s saying simply by looking at plurality of compartments it could be flow,
`but it could not be as well, and so that doesn’t satisfy the standard.
`And on slide 28, this is figure 5 and one of the figures that they rely
`on in their combination. Again nothing in this figure and nothing in the
`corresponding disclosure talks about flow communication or compartments.
`And finally the Federal Circuit has told us in Novozymes on slide 29 that
`what AVS has done here is not what you can do, and you’re not supposed to
`be able to work backwards from the knowledge of the claims and seek to
`derive support from an amalgam of disclosures, and that’s precisely what
`they tried to do here.
`Finally, AVS argues that well if flow communication’s so obvious
`that it must inherently be disclosed in the application. Slide 31, this is their
`argument here. They propose it was readily understood that the principle of
`flow communication is well known and cited by the examples they use are
`life rafts and air mattresses. This is irrelevant. The Federal Circuit has told
`us entitlement to a filing date, it does not matter if it’s obvious or not, it’s
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`whether it’s actually disclosed or inherently disclosed. So it doesn’t matter
`whether it was obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art that you could
`have potentially used flow communication in an air mattress or a life raft.
`This is on slide 31.
`Slide 32, these are the references they rely on; Hayashi, Young and
`Day. I won’t spend too much time on this. We’ve addressed this in the
`briefing, Your Honors, but we believe that none of these -- well first of all,
`none of these references actually disclose multiple compartments in flow
`communication but secondly, they’re not incorporated by reference like
`AVS says they are in the briefing.
`Slide 33, the incorporation by reference standard actually requires that
`you use the words incorporate in the reference. Slide 34 shows it didn’t,
`they used included which has a different meaning and, again, none of these
`references, slide 35, Hayashi is talking about a gas generating apparatus, not
`about flow communication. Young, slide 36, nothing about flow
`communication. Slide 37, Day, nothing about flow communication, just
`inflation aspirators, and so you can’t rely on that at all and like I told you
`before, the Federal Circuit has told us that entitlement to a filing date does
`not extend to subject matter which is not disclosed but would be obvious
`over what’s expressly disclosed, and that is their principal argument. Slide
`38.
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`As you can see here on slide 39 they did disclose this concept of flow
`communication, but they did so in 2004. Here you can see for the first time
`this concept of interconnected compartments and a plurality of
`interconnected gas receiving compartments on slide 39, and that was filed on
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`October 27th, 2004, eight years after the December 12th, 1995 date and this
`is the first time you see this concept ever disclosed.
`Figure 14 was included for the first time. You’re going to see this
`figure again when we talk about the prior art because it looks virtually
`similar to some of the other figures that were disclosed well before this
`October 27th, 2004 date. Figure 14 eventually became figure 91 as you can
`see on slide 41. That figure wasn’t actually even included until 2007 but this
`is the general invention here. This is the side curtain air bag that includes
`the plurality of compartments in flow communication. I think I have some
`time. I’ll go through briefly the grounds for rejection.
`JUDGE CHAGNON: Counsel, let me ask you a question first.
`MR. ABHYANKAR: Sure.
`JUDGE CHAGNON: If we were to agree with Patent Owner that
`there is sufficient support in the ’247 application that was filed in 1995, does
`Petitioner contend there is any problem with the priority chain between that
`application and the application that led to the ’093 patent?
`MR. ABHYANKAR: So if I understand, I think you’re asking
`whether -- if the 1995 application disclosed it, whether there’s any missing
`disclosures in the corresponding applications that led --
`JUDGE CHAGNON: In the intervening applications --
`MR. ABHYANKAR: I don’t believe so, Your Honor. I believe that
`the gaps that we’ve identified are consistently included in all of the
`applications up until the 2004 application, so I don’t think we would have a
`basis -- if you were to find that the disclosures in the 1995 app were
`sufficient then I don’t think we have an argument that any of the others were
`not.
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`JUDGE CHAGNON: Thank you.
`MR. ABHYANKAR: So our grounds for rejection, we have 13 of
`them and we presented them, and AVS has not disputed them. I won’t go
`through all of them. I think they’re adequately set forth in the briefing and
`our expert declarations on slide 43, but as we’ve talked about on slide 44
`they haven’t actually said anything about whether they disclose or do not
`disclose any particular claim element.
`I’ll briefly walk through our first combination of HÅland in view of
`Stütz here on slide 45. Slide 46 is HÅland here, it was filed in 1996. It was
`filed by an Autoliv engineer, Autoliv is my client, and you can see here the
`figure up above, figure 6, we’ll just go to the comparison slide that I have at
`the end, but it looks pretty similar to something we saw before and this is the
`same figure that was disclosed by Mr. Breed in his October 27th, 2004
`application. But this figure was already disclosed somewhere else. It was
`disclosed by HÅland on February 20th, 1996, eight years before.
`JUDGE MOORE: What slide are you on now, counselor?
`MR. ABHYANKAR: Oh, I’m sorry. Slide 55, Judge Moore.
`JUDGE MOORE: Thank you.
`MR. ABHYANKAR: So I think this shows us the HÅland side
`curtain air bag, that side curtain air bag that’s claimed in the ’093 was
`invented around 1995, but it was invented by HÅland in 1996. It’s virtually
`identical and I can hardly see any differences that would matter. I’m happy
`to walk the Board through the particular reference disclosures, they track
`what’s in our briefing. Otherwise I can reserve time for rebuttal. It’s up to
`the Board if you’d like me to, or if you have any questions on the specific
`disclosures I’d be happy to address them.
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`JUDGE CHAGNON: I don’t have any questions so it’s up to you.
`MR. ABHYANKAR: Okay.
`JUDGE JEFFERSON: No questions.
`JUDGE MOORE: None here.
`MR. ABHYANKAR: Thank you, Your Honors.
`DR. GONSALVES: Good afternoon, Your Honors. May it please the
`Board, I’m going to take the same approach that I did in the previous hearing
`which is to look at the hard copies of the slide presentation so that all of us
`are looking at the same copy. So may I please approach the bench?
`JUDGE CHAGNON: Please approach, thank you
`
`(Counsel approached the bench.)
`DR. GONSALVES: Now could you please take a look at slide No. 2
`which identifies the topics that I will be speaking about today. But I’m
`going to spend nearly all of my time on the last topic and I’m going to go
`through the first few very quickly.
`Now with respect to claim construction our position is in the brief as it
`was -- which is consistent with the positions on claim construction that we
`set forth in the brief for the previous IPR that I also discussed in the previous
`hearing. With respect to on slide No. 3 you see the proposed construction of
`a single air bag.
`On slide No. 4 you see the proposed construction from the Patent
`Owner for a single air bag extending across at least two seating positions of
`two rows of the passenger compartment of a vehicle air bag.
`In slide No. 5 you see our position for the construction of a plurality
`of compartments being a separate chamber and as we discussed this
`morning, our position is that a person of ordinary skill in the art reading the
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`term compartments would need to be able to identify a boundary for the
`compartment, and that is the reason why you would have to have a well-
`defined boundary for a compartment that although it was in flow
`communication, the opening between the two would be relatively small. It
`wasn’t because those specific words about relatively small opening was
`recited in the claim. Our position is that when a person reading the claim
`term compartment in the context of the ’093 patent would understand that
`term as we’ve set forth here.
`So if you can go to slide No. 6, and I’m not going to spend a lot of
`time on this because I don’t think it’s contested. Everyone is aware of the In
`re Hilmer case that was decided by the Federal Circuit’s predecessor that
`HÅland or the other references cannot rely on their foreign application filing
`date for 102(e) purposes and because of that, should the Board agree with
`our position that the ’093 patent is entitled to the December of 1995 priority
`date, then HÅland would not be prior art. Similarly on slide No. 7 for the
`same reason that HÅland is not prior art, if the priority date of the ’093
`patent is December the 12th, 1995, then Stütz is also not prior art.
`And then on slide No. 8 we also refer to many of the other references
`that would not qualify as prior art also, and if you look at the proposed
`grounds for rejection because certain of these references are not prior art
`then all of the proposed grounds go away on that basis.
`So turn to slide No. 9, and I’m going to emphasize something from
`the Federal Circuit case Hyatt v. Boone which was also cited. It’s a 1998
`Federal Circuit case which was also cited in the papers and it says as
`follows,
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`“To comply with the written description requirement of 35 U.S.C.
`112(a) or Pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112 paragraph one, ought to be entitled to an
`earlier priority date or filing date under 35 U.S.C. 119, 120 and 365 or 386.
`Each claim limitation must be,” and here’s the important part, “expressly,
`implicitly or inherently supported in the original filed disclosure,” and one
`of the key terms in that group of three is implicitly. It doesn’t have to be
`expressly set forth. It can be implicitly set forth as would be understood by
`one of ordinary skill in the art.
`JUDGE JEFFERSON: Is that the distinction between the Patent
`Owner and Petitioner here, that you’re claiming that these limitations are
`implicitly found in the original application but not expressly or inherently
`found?
`DR. GONSALVES: Well one of the things I noticed from my
`colleague’s presentation for the Petitioner was that I think it was a
`mischaracterization of many of our arguments saying that we relied upon
`either express or inherently, but we didn’t just limit our reliance to those two
`options. We also argued that it could be implicitly disclosed.
`So now the Petitioner in his papers didn’t argue that there wasn’t
`written description for every single limitation that was recited in the claims
`of the ’093 patent. They identified two limitations that they argued were not
`supported, didn’t provide written description support in the priority chain of
`applications, the earliest one being the ’247 application which is in Exhibit
`2020. So I’m going to discuss these two limitations that the Petitioner
`contested and not all of the others because they’re not at issue in this
`proceeding.
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`Case IPR2016-01794
`Patent 9,043,093 B2
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`So with respect to the first one, the claim limitation that’s disputed as
`to whether or not there’s support is as follows. A single air bag extending
`across two seating positions of a passenger compartment of a vehicle, and if
`you could go to slide 16 of my presentation -- and we’ll go back to the other
`slides also -- but I just want to go to slide 16 for now because this is a set of
`questions that I asked Dr. Rouhana, the Petitioner’s expert, about the ’247
`application and the question is:
`“And is one of those locations where the air bag can be mounted a
`location along the side of the vehicle and suiting for mounting the module
`for protecting occupants of both front and rear seats in a side impact?” and
`Dr. Rouhana answered, “Yes.”
`And the next question was:
`“And does the phrase that I just read indicate that the ’247 application
`discloses a single side air bag extending across two rows of the vehicle?”
`and the answer is, “Yes.”
`And on the very next slide, slide No. 17, the questioning continues.
`“Does the sentence that I just read indicate that the single side air bag
`shown in figure 5 extends across two rows of the vehicle?” and Dr. Rouhana
`said,
`
`“It states that the invention shown is mounted in a manner to provide
`head protection for the front and rear side occupants in side impacts.”
`And the follow-on question was:
`“And in order to provide head protection for a front and rear seat
`occupant, the air bag would have to extend across two rows of the vehicle.
`Is that your understanding?” And again the answer is, “Yes.”
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`Case IPR2016-01794
`Patent 9,043,093 B2
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`So one of the two claim limitations on which Petitioner is arguing that
`there isn’t sufficient support in the priority application is a single air bag
`extending across two seating positions of a passenger compartment of a
`vehicle, but in fact there is no dispute between the two experts that the ’247
`application, which was the December, 1995 the first application in the
`priority chain, provides written description support for this claim limitation.
`Now, in the Institution decision the Board indicated that the Patent
`Owner should specify in each application of the chain where the support can
`be found and I’ve been doing this long enough that when a judge asks me to
`do something, I know enough to do it, so I won’t recite all of the cites here
`for each of these applications because there’s many of them, but we were
`careful in the Patent Owner response to not only cite the first application, the
`’247 application where the support could be found, but also in any
`intervening application from the ’247 all the way up to the ’093 patent. All
`of those cites are in the Patent Owner’s response.
`Beyond Dr. Rouhana’s admission that there is indeed support for the
`claim limitation of a single air bag extending across two seating positions of
`a passenger compartment of a vehicle, in the ’247 application there are also
`additional reasons why there’s support for, for example, if you go back to
`slide No. 10, the ’238 patent which is the patent corresponding to the ’247
`application but the citation below from Exhibit 2020 is actually to the ’247
`application, it describes a single air bag protecting both the front and rear
`passenger of a vehicle to provide an air bag module where a single module
`can be used to protect both a front and a rear passenger of the vehicle in side
`impacts. At the bottom there’s another quote from the ’247 application.
`Briefly,
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`Case IPR2016-01794
`Patent 9,043,093 B2
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`“The air bag module in accordance with the invention is long and thin
`and can conveniently be made in any length and bent into almost any
`generally linear shape. The module is typically mounted on or slightly
`below a surface in the passenger compartment such as the ceiling,” and then
`it goes on and continues.
`There’s also another cite to the ’247 application and again the cites to
`the intervening applications are all in the Patent Owner response. But if you
`turn to slide 11, it indicates as follows,
`“That the air bag can be positioned at the ceiling of the vehicle and it
`protects occupants of both the front and the rear seats in a side impact.”
`On slide No. 12, there’s additional citations to the ’247 application.
`“A single air bag module can provide protection for both a front seat
`occupant and a rear seat occupant on the same side of the vehicle, extends in
`a hor