Posts Tagged: "expert testimony"

Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential decision in Smartrend Manufacturing Group (SMG), Inc. v. Opti-Luxx Inc. reversing and vacating an infringement ruling from the Western District of Michigan following a jury verdict for patent owner SMG in a case over illuminated school bus signs. In assessing Opti-Luxx’s challenge to Smartrend’s expert testimony offered on the perspective of ordinary observers, the Federal Circuit strongly hinted that such testimony could support design patent infringement allegations by drawing upon relevancy principles from the utility patent context.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order list denying a petition for writ of certiorari filed by patent owner EcoFactor to challenge this May’s en banc ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) granting a new damages trial in EcoFactor’s infringement case against Google. In dismissing EcoFactor’s cert petition, the Supreme Court avoided ruling on whether the Federal Circuit has created a heightened Daubert standard for expert testimony on patent infringement damages and leaves patent owner EcoFactor without recourse for its due process claim against the Federal Circuit’s introduction of unbriefed contract interpretation theories in its en banc decision.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Thursday issued a precedential decision in Rex Medical, L.P. v. Intuitive Surgical, Inc., affirming a district court’s exclusion of a patent owner’s damages expert and reduction of a $10 million jury award to nominal damages of $1. The decision, authored by Circuit Judge Stoll and joined by Circuit Judges Dyk and Prost, held that the United States District Court for the District of Delaware properly considered the requirements for expert testimony based on comparable license agreements to establish reasonable royalty damages.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday vacated a district court’s grant of summary judgment of non-infringement for Apple, holding that the district court abused its discretion in striking an expert infringement opinion. The CAFC opinion was authored by Chief Judge Moore. The underlying lawsuit was brought by Taction Technology, Inc. against Apple in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, alleging certain Apple products that use haptics technology infringed claims 1–20 of its U.S. Patent No. 10,659,885 and claims 1–17 of its U.S. Patent No. 10,820,117. Apple moved for summary judgment of noninfringement and the district court granted the motion because it said Taction’s expert opinion “contained a new theory in violation of local patent rules and improperly argued claim construction.”

The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) on Wednesday issued a split precedential decision in EcoFactor v. Google, with the majority holding that a district court’s order denying Google’s motion for a new trial on damages following a $20 million damages award for EcoFactor, Inc. should be reversed. Judges Reyna and Stark each issued opinions dissenting in part.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential decision affirming a district court’s finding that NexStep, Inc. failed to prove that Comcast Cable Communications infringed its patents. Judge Chen authored the majority opinion and Judge Reyna authored a partial dissent, disagreeing with the majority’s holding that one of the patents was not infringed under the doctrine of equivalents.

In a rare grant of en banc rehearing, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today agreed to revisit a June 2024 precedential decision that affirmed a district court’s orders in favor of EcoFactor, Inc. against Google, whose appeal in part asked for a new trial on damages due to prejudicial error. Judge Prost dissented-in-part from the panel opinion, stating that the majority’s opinion with respect to damages “at best muddles our precedent and at worst contradicts it.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), in a precedential decision, today rejected Planmeca Inc. USA’s attempt to argue that a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) must have had the requisite experience to qualify as an expert at the time of invention, rather than as of the time of testimony. Judge Stoll authored the opinion.
Osseo Imaging LLC sued Planmeca for infringement of several patents covering 3D imaging systems and a jury ultimately found that Planmeca directly infringed all asserted claims but one and that none of the claims were invalid for obviousness. The jury was instructed during trial that “a person of ordinary skill in the art would have a bachelor’s degree in electrical or computer engineering, plus 3 to 5 years working in a diagnostic imaging environment that uses the techniques described in the Asserted Patents.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) today issued a precedential opinion affirming a district court order that struck parts of an infringement expert report and also granted summary judgment of non-infringement to Valve Corporation. The CAFC held that it is proper to strike expert testimony that did not rely on the agreed upon claim construction adopted by the district court. Treehouse Avatar, LLC owns U.S. Patent 8,180,858, which relates to a method of presenting data based on choices made by users with respect to characters in a network site, such as choosing clothing and hairstyles for the characters. The case turned on the meaning of “character-enabled (CE) network sites” (“CE limitation”) in the claims, which the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) had construed in an earlier inter partes review (IPR) proceeding to mean “a network location, other than a user device, operating under control of a site program to present a character, object, or scene to a user interface.”

Federal Rule of Evidence 702 makes clear that a qualified expert may testify if he or she could help a trier of fact understand evidence and facts at issue. Fairness and reliability are the lineaments of Rule 702 and other rules governing expert discovery. Simply put, each party is given the opportunity to present expert testimony, and to challenge that of the opposing party. As gatekeepers of expert testimony, judges are careful not to give one party an unfair advantage over another regardless of the type of expert presented. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit recently found that the District Court for the Northern District of Florida abused its discretion by allowing unqualified expert testimony concerning the invalidity of a patent. HVLPO2, LLC v. Oxygen Frog, LLC, Case No. 19-1649 (Fed. Cir. Feb. 5, 2020) (Moore, J) involved the infringement of patents related to an oxygen supply management apparatus for glass blowing.