Federal Circuit Accords Patentable Weight to a Functional Limitation to Hold that Evidence Fails to Support a Reasonable Expectation of Success

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in University of Strathclyde v. Clear-Vu Lighting LLC, Case No. 20-2243 (Fed. Cir. 2021), accorded full patentable weight to a functional limitation, which only required the invention to be effective without imparting additional structure or claim definition.  Based on this determination, the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded a decision by the Patent Trial and Appeals Board finding that there was no obviousness where the asserted prior art did not disclose a successful method required by the invention.