Raytheon Engine Patent Wrongly Nixed by ‘Futuristic’ Invention

Raytheon Technologies Corp. convinced the Federal Circuit that its airplane engine patent was improperly invalidated by General Electric Co.‘s reference to an invention that can’t be made.

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board found Raytheon’s U.S. Patent No. 9,695,751 was obvious in light of a 1987 NASA technical memorandum on a turbofan engine that predated the patent.

But the construction of the engine disclosed by the memo, referred to as Knip, was “undisputedly unattainable at that time (and, according to the record, continues to this day to be beyond reality),” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ...