Case: Patents/Obviousness (P.T.A.B.)

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board held that challenged claims of Stratus Medical LLC’s patent that discloses systems and methods for performing thermal tissue ablation using radiofrequency energy are unpatentable as obvious over prior art, in an inter partes review by Avanos Medical Inc. The board said that the challenged claims are obvious over prior art that discloses a bent tip electrical surgical probe comprising a medical needle or canula for stimulation or ablation directed to improved-coverage RF neurotomy instrumentation, comprising a multiplicity of electrically conductive, and that discloses a radio frequency ablation device having a plurality of deployable electrodes ...