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Parties Involved:
Gator Tail, LLC
Appellant
Go-Devil Manufacturing Company of Louisiana Incorporated
Appellee
Mud Buddy LLC
Appellee

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

GATOR TAIL, LLC,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

MUD BUDDY LLC, DBA MUD BUDDY 

MANUFACTURING,

Defendant-Appellee

----------------------------------------------------------------------

GATOR TAIL, LLC,

Plaintiff-Appellant

v.

GO-DEVIL MANUFACTURING COMPANY OF 

LOUISIANA INCORPORATED,

DBA GO-DEVIL MANUFACTURERS OF 

LOUISIANA, INC.,

Defendant-Appellee

______________________ 

2014-1747, 2014-1748

______________________ 

Appeals from the United States District Court for the 

Middle District of Louisiana in Nos. 3:08-cv-00125-BAJRLB, 3:08-cv-00124-BAJ-RLB, Judge Brian A. Jackson.

______________________ 

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2 GATOR TAIL, LLC v. MUD BUDDY LLC

Decided: June 22, 2015

______________________ 

 MATTHEW WOLF, Arnold & Porter LLP, Washington, 

DC, argued for plaintiff-appellant. Also represented by 

JOEL WILEY MOHRMAN, ANDERSON LAM CAO, McGlinchey 

Stafford, Houston, TX. 

SAMUEL C. STRAIGHT, Ray Quinney & Nebeker P.C., 

Salt Lake City, UT, argued for defendant-appellee Mud

Buddy LLC. Also represented by JED H. HANSEN, Thorpe, 

North & Western LLP, Sandy, UT.

JOHN PARHAM MURRILL, Taylor, Porter, Brooks & 

Phillips, Baton Rouge, LA, argued for defendant-appellee 

Go-Devil Manufacturing Company of Louisiana Incorporated. Also represented by FREDRICK R. TULLEY. 

______________________ 

Before MOORE, CLEVENGER, and WALLACH, Circuit 

Judges.

CLEVENGER, Circuit Judge. 

Gator Tail, LLC appeals the decision of the district 

court that the asserted patents are invalid as obvious, for 

lack of written description, and as indefinite. Broussard v. 

Go-Devil Mfg. Co., 29 F. Supp. 3d 753, 757 (M.D. La. 

2014). This court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1295(a)(1) (2012). Because the district court’s conclusion 

that the asserted claims are obvious was supported by 

factual findings that are not clearly erroneous, we affirm. 

I 

This case concerns United States Patent Nos. 

7,052,340 (“the ’340 patent”) and 7,297,035 (“the ’035 

patent”), collectively referred to as Gator Tail’s patents. 

Both patents name Kyle Broussard as the sole inventor,

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and essentially claim the same invention: a short-tail mud 

motor with a horizontally mounted engine. 

A 

“Mud motors” are boat motors designed for shallow 

waters, and are primarily used in fishing and hunting. A 

mud motor’s propeller is positioned near the water’s 

surface so that the boat can maneuver in shallow water 

and in water congested with mud and vegetation. 

The traditional mud motor, which dominated the 

market from the 1970s until the early 2000s, is the long 

tail motor. United States Patent No. 2,996,035 (“the 

Torrey Patent”) describes one version of a long tail mud 

motor. The Torrey Patent discloses a propulsion unit that 

is mounted to the transom of a boat. It includes a motor

(M), with a horizontally oriented engine that directly 

attaches to a propeller shaft (14). A belt (18) and pulleys 

(16 and 17) drive motion of the propeller shaft. U.S. 

Patent No. 2,996,035 (filed Dec. 3, 1958). 

U.S. Patent No. 2,996,035 fig. 1.

While the long tail mud motor provided for boat operation in shallow and muddy waters, it posed several 

disadvantages. In particular, the long propeller shaft 

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means that these motors have a wide turning radius and 

are difficult to maneuver. Relatedly, steering the long 

propeller requires substantial space inside the boat. 

To avoid this problem with the long tail motors, companies started looking to short tail mud motor designs. 

United States Patent No. 5,741,165 (“the Saito Patent”)

discloses one such motor. Saito’s short tail motor was 

designed to increase range of movement, decrease boat 

space occupied by the motor, and incorporate a mounting 

bracket that would also permit use of conventional outboard motors on the same boat. See U.S. Patent No. 

2,996,035 col. 1 ll. 45–51 (filed Jan. 27, 1996). To that end, 

Saito discloses a propulsion system that can be attached 

to the rear of a boat. It includes a vertically oriented 

engine (104) which connects to a drive shaft (117). The 

drive shaft, in turn, attaches to and drives motion in the 

propeller shaft (123). 

U.S. Patent No. 2,996,035 fig. 7.

With this design, the propeller is shorter and that 

means better steering, maneuverability, and control. 

Broussard v. Go-Devil Mfg. Co., 29 F. Supp. 3d at 771.

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However, because the Saito short tail design uses a vertical engine and vertical drive shaft, it has to hang off the 

back of a boat. And that creates balance problems. Id. at 

775.

B 

Gator Tail’s ’035 patent is a continuation in part of 

the ’340 patent. For the purposes of this appeal, the 

patents essentially claim the same invention: a beltdriven short tail mud motor with a horizontal engine 

capable of being mounted to the transom of a small boat 

in a manner common to outboard engines. 

U.S. Patent No. 7,297,035 fig. 16 (filed May 22, 2006). 

The overall design of the Gator Tail motor is similar 

to the Saito Patent, with two key differences. First, Gator 

Tail’s patents require a horizontally oriented engine. See, 

e.g., Broussard, 29 F. Supp. 3d at 797 (describing Gator 

Tail’s patents as containing horizontal output engines). 

Second, the engine connects directly to a timing belt drive 

gear (104) that attaches to and drives motion in the 

parallel propeller. Saito, on the other hand, does not 

disclose a timing belt and it requires a vertical, not horizontal, engine. 

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As an example, claim 1 of the ’035 patent discloses: 

A marine craft comprising

a hull comprising a transom; and

a portable drive assembly temporarily attached to 

the transom, the portable drive assembly comprising

an elongated drive housing enclosing an upper 

drive assembly and a lower driven assembly and a 

timing belt connecting the upper drive assembly 

to the lower driven assembly; and

an engine mounting plate attached externally to 

the drive housing adjacent the upper drive assembly perpendicular to the drive housing;

wherein the lower driven assembly comprises a 

propeller shaft at least a portion of which is enclosed within a shaft housing attached to the drive 

housing adjacent the driven assembly, the shaft 

housing extending in excess of 18 inches beyond 

the drive housing, and a propeller attached to the 

propeller shaft.

The other asserted claims depend from, or are essentially 

identical to, this claim. 

II

Gator Tail alleged that defendants, Mud Buddy, LLC 

(“Mud Buddy”) and Go-Devil Manufacturing Company of 

Louisiana (“Go-Devil”) manufacture products that infringe claims 1, 3–9, and 11–13 of the ’340 patent and 

claims 1, 3–7, and 9–13 of the ’035 patent.

A 

After Gator Tail filed its complaints, Mud Buddy requested an ex parte reexamination of both patents by the 

United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”). 

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During those reexamination proceedings, the examiner 

initially rejected all the claims as obvious in light of the 

Saito Patent and other references. After a series of exchanges between Mr. Broussard and the PTO, including 

the introduction of expert declarations and additional 

claims, the PTO confirmed all claims of the patents. In 

relevant part, the PTO concluded that Mr. Broussard’s 

expert successfully established “modification of the Saito 

Patent proposed in the rejection would lead to significant 

changes . . . which would not be obvious to one of ordinary 

skill in the art.” Broussard, 29 F. Supp. 3d at 790.

B 

The district court held a three day bench trial on the 

issue of patent validity. In its amended final judgment, 

the district court held that all the claims of the ’340 and 

’035 patents were invalid as either obvious, indefinite, or 

failing the written description requirement. 

On appeal, Gator Tail raises three specific challenges 

to the amended final judgment: (1) the holding of obviousness of the asserted claims of the ’340 and ’035 patents, (2) the holding that claim 1 of the ’340 patent is 

invalid for lack of written description, and (3) the holding 

that claims 1, 8, and 14 of the ’340 patent and claim 1 of 

the ’035 patent are invalid as indefinite under 35 U.S.C. 

§ 112. Claims 1 and 8 of the ’340 patent and claim 1 of the 

’035 patent were all asserted claims. Because those claims 

were held invalid as obvious, and we affirm that holding, 

we do not address the alternative holding that those 

claims are invalid on other grounds. Method claim 14 of 

the ’340 patent was not listed as an asserted claim, but 

the district court’s holding of invalidity includes claim 14, 

and the obviousness analysis of the district court applies 

as well to claim 14 of the ’340 patent, making the indefiniteness holding an alternative ground that we need not 

reach.

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The district court’s obviousness analysis focused primarily on claim 1 of the ’035 and claim 1 of the ’340 

patent. The court determined the content of the two 

claims was indistinguishable, and applied the same 

reasoning to invalidate both. All the other asserted claims 

depend from these claims. Building on its analysis of 

claim 1 of the ’340 patent, the court made separate findings that each asserted claim was obvious. 

As it relates to this appeal, the district court focused 

on the Torrey and Saito Patents when assessing obviousness. And the court found that there were only limited 

ways to improve upon Torrey or Saito. What is more, 

those improvements were merely predictable uses of prior 

art elements. The court also found that one of ordinary 

skill in the art is a person with an undergraduate education in mechanical engineering and experience with 

marine propulsions systems. Because, through the lens of 

a person of ordinary skill, the asserted claims were merely a predictable combination of Saito and Torrey, the 

district court held that the claims were invalid. 

First, the court considered whether it would be obvious to replace Saito’s vertical engine with a horizontal 

one. Because Saito used a vertical drive shaft motor, the 

whole propulsion unit had to hang off the back of a boat. 

This, in turn, created balance problems. The court found 

that one of ordinary skill would be motivated to solve this 

balance problem by moving Saito’s engine further into the 

boat—above the transom. And “the expert witnesses 

tended to agree that in order to relocate the engine above 

the transom, one of ordinary skill in the art would necessarily substitute Saito’s vertical drive-shaft engine for a 

horizontal drive-shaft engine.” Broussard, 29 F. Supp. 3d 

at 775. In addition, the court was persuaded by expert 

testimony that one of ordinary skill would use a timing 

belt to connect a horizontal drive engine to the horizontal 

propeller. Overall, the court concluded this was a case 

where there were a limited number of design options 

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available. And one of ordinary skill would have seen the 

benefit of upgrading Saito in the way Gator Tail’s patents 

did. 

The district court then conducted a separate obviousness inquiry, based primarily on the Torrey Patent. The 

only significant limitation present in Gator Tail’s patents, 

but missing from the Torrey Patent, is the elongated drive 

housing. This drive housing refers to the overall housing 

that contains the engine, the timing belt, and the connection to the propeller in the lower portion. And the district 

court found that, like Mr. Broussard and the Saito inventors, a person of ordinary skill would be motivated to 

improve on the long tail motor with a short tail design. 

Furthermore, implementing the short tail requires an

elongated drive housing. Therefore, the court concluded 

that claim 1 of both patents was an obvious combination 

of prior art elements. 

Concluding that the defendants established a prima 

facie case of obviousness, the district court then considered Gator Tail’s evidence of secondary considerations—

as potentially objective evidence of non-obviousness. The 

court determined that Gator Tail’s evidence of commercial 

success was not enough to support a finding of nonobviousness. Similarly, the court was not persuaded by 

Gator Tail’s arguments of unexpected results, long unmet 

need, failure of others, or copying. 

II

On appeal, Gator Tail makes three main arguments 

challenging the district court’s obviousness analysis: that 

the court failed to give proper deference to the PTO, that 

the Saito reference teaches away from the claimed invention, and that the court failed to correctly consider evidence of Gator Tail’s commercial success. 

Obviousness is a question of law, which this Court reviews de novo, and underlying factual questions are 

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reviewed for clear error. Scanner Techs. Corp. v. ICOS 

Vision Sys. Corp. N.V., 528 F.3d 1365, 1379 (Fed. Cir. 

2008). 

A 

Gator Tail complains that the district court misunderstood the nature of PTO reexamination proceedings, 

which led the court to misapply the presumption of validity. Brief for Plaintiff-Appellant at 35–36, Gator Tail v. 

Mud Buddy, Nos. 14-1747, 14-1748 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 3 

2014); see also 35 U.S.C. § 282. According to Gator Tail, 

the court overemphasized the PTO’s interim rejections, 

and therefore found that the “ultimate acceptance of those 

patents was half-hearted and due little deference.” Brief 

for Plaintiff-Appellant at 35. 

District courts are directed to consider a PTO reexamination decision as evidence when determining invalidity. 

Fromson v. Advance Offset Plate, Inc., 755 F.2d 1549, 

1555 (Fed. Cir. 1985). While the court must consider the 

reexamination as evidence, it is not bound by the PTO’s 

decision. Id. at 1555. Here, the district court discussed 

the PTO proceedings at length, and explained why it did 

not afford substantial weight to the PTO’s decision. 

In particular, the court credited expert testimony introduced during trial—testimony which was contrary to 

declarations submitted during reexamination and which 

undermined the PTO’s reasoning. Gator Tail’s expert 

declaration to the PTO stated that one of ordinary skill 

would be discouraged from reorienting the engine in Saito 

to match the claimed horizontal engine. And the PTO 

examiner relied heavily on that declaration when allowing the patents. Broussard, 29 F. Supp. 3d at 782. However, at trial, all parties’ experts admitted that one of 

ordinary skill would be motivated to substitute the vertical engine with a horizontal one to overcome balance 

problems. See, e.g., Broussard, 29 F. Supp. 3d at 775–76, 

782–83. The court considered the trial testimony to be a 

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more complete picture of the evidence, and concluded that 

the PTO decision on reexamination deserved less weight. 

The district court’s consideration of the PTO reexamination was not clearly erroneous.

B 

Next, Gator Tail argues that the Saito reference unequivocally teaches away from using a horizontal engine in 

a short tail motor. And, where a reference teaches away 

from the claimed invention, the patents are more likely to 

be non-obvious. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398, 

416 (2007). According to Gator Tail, the district court 

disregarded Saito’s teaching away. However, we agree 

with the district court that Saito does not teach away 

from Gator Tail’s patents. 

A reference teaches away from a claimed invention 

“when a person of ordinary skill, upon reading the reference, would be discouraged from following the path set 

out in the reference, or would be led in a direction divergent from the path that was taken by the applicant.” In re 

Gurley, 27 F.3d 551, 553 (Fed. Cir. 1994). References may 

also teach away if, when taking the two references in 

combination, it would produce a “seemingly inoperative 

device.” McGinley v. Franklin Sports, Inc., 262 F.3d 1339, 

1354 (Fed. Cir. 2001).

On the other hand, if a reference describes a modification as “somewhat inferior,” then the reference does not 

teach away. Gurley, 27 F.3d at 553. “A reference does not 

teach away . . . if it merely expresses a general preference 

for an alternative invention but does not ‘criticize, discredit, or otherwise discourage’ investigation into the 

invention claimed.” DePuy Spine, Inc. v. Medtronic Sofamor Danek, Inc., 567 F.3d 1314, 1327 (Fed. Cir. 2009).

The Saito Patent does not teach away from the use of 

horizontal motors. Instead, it describes the shortcomings

of long tail motors that use horizontal engines. For examCase: 14-1747 Document: 80-2 Page: 11 Filed: 06/22/2015
12 GATOR TAIL, LLC v. MUD BUDDY LLC

ple, the Saito Patent explains how the horizontal engine 

motors that were on the market at the time took up too 

much space in the boat. The Saito Patent also describes 

the limited range of movement enabled by the long tail 

motor. In fact, the Saito Patent states that it was “directed towards several embodiments of outboard marine 

propulsion systems that overcome the disadvantages of 

the prior art . . .” U.S. Patent No. 5,741,165 col. 1 ll. 45–

55. 

Nowhere does Saito suggest that using a horizontal 

engine would render the motor inoperable. It merely 

describes the benefits of its vertical engine when compared to the dominant prior art—the long tail motor. 

These are not statements that would deter one of ordinary 

skill from combining features of the long-tail motor with 

the Saito Patent. See United States v. Adams, 383 U.S. 39, 

52 (1966) (finding that one of ordinary skill in the art 

would have to ignore long-accepted factors in the field of 

wet batters to arrive at the claimed invention). In fact, the 

district court heard several experts testify regarding why 

one of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to 

replace Saito’s vertical motor with a horizontal one. 

The Saito Patent explains why it is an improvement 

over the prior art—prior art that had a horizontal engine. 

Therefore, Saito inevitably suggests that horizontal 

engines are inferior to its vertical engine. However, these 

statements do not teach away from Gator Tail’s invention.

C 

Finally, Gator Tail argues that the district court applied the wrong legal test when considering evidence of 

commercial success. Any error by the district court was, 

however, harmless error because Gator Tail has failed to 

produce evidence of success suggesting the patents are 

not obviousness.

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Evidence of commercial success is only relevant to the 

obviousness inquiry if “there is a nexus between the 

claimed invention and the commercial success.” Ormco 

Corp. v. Align Tech., Inc., 463 F.3d 1299, 1312 (Fed. Cir. 

2006). Where the marketed product is coextensive with 

the claimed features, then the court should presume that 

commercial success of the product is due to the patented 

invention. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. v. Philip 

Morris Inc., 229 F.3d 1120, 1130 (Fed. Cir. 2000). 

According to Gator Tail, the district court failed to 

presume that the company’s commercial success was due 

to the patented invention. Instead, the court incorrectly 

evaluated whether individual patented features were 

present in the prior art. And where an individual feature 

was present in the prior art, the court concluded it was 

not relevant to commercial success. 

In this case, the parties do not dispute that the Gator 

Tail product embodies the patents in question. Therefore, 

the court should have presumed that any commercial 

success of Gator Tail’s motors was a function of the 

claimed patent. And that commercial success should have 

weighed in favor of non-obviousness, unless the defendants proved the alleged success was due to something 

else. See Brown & Williamson, 229 F.3d at 1130 (once the 

patentee shows that the patent and product are coextensive, the “burden shifts to the party asserting obviousness 

to present evidence to rebut the presumed nexus”). 

However, if there was any error in the district court’s 

nexus analysis, it was harmless. In this case, Gator Tail’s 

only evidence of commercial success is the fact that it sold 

zero motors in 2004 and by 2014 it was selling one thousand motors per year. Gator Tail has failed to establish 

the overall size of the mud motor market, the size of the 

short tail motor market, or any other facts that would

indicate whether selling one thousands units per year is a 

commercial success in this industry. 

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“This court has noted in the past that evidence related 

solely to the number of units sold provides a very weak 

showing of commercial success, if any.” In re Huang, 100 

F.3d 135, 140 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (citing Cable Elec. Prods., 

Inc. v. Genmark, Inc., 770 F.2d 1015, 1026–27 (Fed. Cir. 

1985)). Because Gator Tail failed to introduce any evidence that establishes commercial success, the court’s

arguably flawed nexus analysis is harmless error.

CONCLUSION

All of the claims at issue of the two patents in suit are 

invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 103. The amended judgment of 

the district court is affirmed. 

AFFIRMED

No costs.

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