Opinion ID: 1086342
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Wallace Publication Date

Text: Garrido’s primary argument on appeal is that the Board erred by treating Wallace as having been published GARRIDO v. HOLT 7 in 1996, before the filing date of the ’703 patent. 2 In particular, he argues that although Wallace may have been registered before the filing date, it was not published before that date. Garrido contends that the publication date issue is not waived, because he “raised [it] clearly in . . . [the] Appeal Brief” before the Board. Appellant’s Br. at 6. This is incorrect. Garrido’s appeal brief before the Board stated without reservation that “Wallace was published on December 16, 1996.” Pat. Owner Corrected Appellant Appeal Br. at 13, No. 2012-000170, (P.T.A.B. Sept. 14, 2010) (“Board Appeal Brief”) (emphasis added). The Board Appeal Brief reiterated the arguments previously made to the examiner, that is, that the claimed invention antedated Wallace for purposes of section 102(a) (an argument not raised on appeal to this court), and that for purposes 2 Holt contends that we lack jurisdiction over this appeal because Garrido failed to name the PTO Director as a party to the appeal, in violation of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. The Rules require that a petition for review of an agency order must, inter alia, “name the agency as a respondent (even though not named in the petition, the United States is a respondent if required by statute).” Fed. R. App. P. 15(a)(2)(B). This argument is meritless. The statute granting this court jurisdiction to review final Board decisions in inter partes reexaminations does not require that the PTO Director be named as a party. To the contrary, the statute addressing review of these PTO decisions, 35 U.S.C. § 143, contemplates that the Director will not be named, as the Director is given the right to intervene. See id. (“The director shall have the right to intervene in an appeal from a decision entered by the [Board].”). 8 GARRIDO v. HOLT of section 102(b), October 7, 1997, was not one full year after the publication date of December 16, 1996: The inside cover of Wallace shows “Copyright 1997 by Maximum Press”. Therefore, patentee ar- gues it is unclear whether Wallace was published prior to October 3, 1997 . . . . The patentee asserts that [the claimed invention] was conceived prior to November 1, 1995. ... The copyright registration of Wallace indi- cates that Wallace was published on December 16, 1996 . . . . December 16, 1996 is within one year of 10/03/97. ... 12/16/96, the date the copyright registration indicates the Wallace reference was published, is within one year of 10/3/97, . . . the effective filing date of the current claims in the ’703 patent. Id. at 12-13. Garrido now argues that insofar as he stated that Wallace’s publication date was 1996, it was an unintentional mistake, that is, an error in typing the last digit of the year. But Garrido’s Board Appeal Brief was clear that he attributed a December 16, 1996 date to the Wallace reference. 3 Our law establishes that a patentee cannot 3 Garrido also urges that his previous statements about Wallace’s publication date can be given no weight because they were merely “attorney argument.” See Appellant’s Br. at 3 (citing In re Schulze, 346 F.2d 600 (CCPA 1965)). But the cited reference does not support him. While it is true that attorney argument “does not take the place of evidence in the record” to support the GARRIDO v. HOLT 9 advocate one position during reexamination, and then, when that position has been accepted by the PTO, reverse its position on appeal. See Elmer v. ICC Fabricating, Inc., 67 F.3d 1571, 1574-75 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (a party’s contrary position on appeal does not negate the record developed below based on its prior position); EF Operating Corp. v. Am. Bldgs., 993 F.2d 1046, 1050 (3d Cir. 1993) (“It goes without saying that one cannot casually cast aside representations, oral or written, in the course of litigation simply because it is convenient to do so . . . .”). Nor can a party escape responsibility for positions it has repeatedly taken in its briefs by subsequently dismissing those positions as mistakes or attorney argument. Fleck v. KDI Sylvan Pools, Inc., 981 F.2d 107, 116-17 (3d Cir. 1992) (“When a litigant takes an unequivocal position at trial, he cannot on appeal assume a contrary position simply because the decision in retrospect was a tactical mistake . . . .”); Alexander v. Town & Country Estates, Inc., 535 F.2d 1081, 1082 & n. 1 (8th Cir. 1976) (“On appeal, we will not decide the case on a legal theory directly contrary to that advanced by appellants at trial.”). Garrido also argues that even if he advanced a 1996 publication date for Wallace in the Board Appeal Brief, his response to Holt’s brief before the Board made no such contention. Instead, he argued: The copyright of [Wallace’s] publication date - if ever -, is not known. It is not 1996 nor 1997 as stated previously during the Reexamination. The patentability of a claim, see Schulze, 346 F. 2d at 602, the Board may rely on a patentee’s repeated concessions against interest, as it did here, see Board Decision at 32 n.12 (finding Garrido’s concession that Wallace was published in 1996 “credible as a statement against interest”). 10 GARRIDO v. HOLT Copyright Office DOES NOT HAVE ANY EVIDENCE that such a document was ever regis- tered in that office. Not in 1996, not in 1997, and NOT EVER. Patent Owner’s Corrected Response to Appeal Brief of Appellant at 16, No. 2012-000170, (P.T.A.B. Sept. 14, 2010) (“Board Response Brief”). The Board did not err in construing PTO Rule 41.52(a)(1), like our own appellate rules, to require that a party’s arguments be raised in the opening brief. Here, Garrido’s Board Response Brief not only raised a new argument, it contradicted the Board Appeal Brief without any explanation for the abrupt change in position. The Board Response Brief never contended, as Garrido does now, that the attribution of a December 16, 1996, publication date to Wallace in Garrido’s earlier filings was an inadvertent mistake. Thus, the Board did not err when it concluded that the argument advanced in Garrido’s petition for rehearing had not been properly raised on appeal, and rejected it. Finally, Garrido argues that even if December 16, 1996 is Wallace’s copyright registration date, a copyright registration is insufficient proof that Wallace was publicly disseminated, as required by section 102. See In re Cronyn, 890 F.2d 1158, 1160 (Fed. Cir. 1989). He then makes the same objection to two other references, Xerox and CAP Ventures. Garrido relies on our holding in In re Lister, 583 F.3d 1307 (Fed. Cir. 2009), where we held that an unpublished manuscript that was registered with the Copyright Office, and available for inspection by visitors to that office, was not a “printed publication” for purposes of section 102(b). Id. at 1311-17. But the Copyright Office allows registration of both published and unpublished documents. See 37 C.F.R. § 202.3(b)(1)(i). Here, Garrido’s concession was not that Wallace was registered on December 16, 1996, but that it was “published” on that date. GARRIDO v. HOLT 11 The publication of Wallace on December 16, 1996, was sufficient to render it prior art under 102(b). Because Garrido has not shown that the Board’s findings with respect to Wallace are erroneous or unsupported by substantial evidence, we decline to disturb them.