Opinion ID: 209952
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Rebuttal of the presumption of surrender foreseeability

Text: Now, although I accept as the law of this case that a presumption of surrender arose with respect to the use of inlet guide vanes to control surge, my colleagues apply the Festo rebuttal criteria in significantly more restrictive ways than were established by the Supreme Court. The Court had explained that [t]hough prosecution history estoppel can bar a patentee from challenging a wide range of alleged equivalents made or distributed by competitors, its reach requires an examination of the subject matter surrendered by the narrowing amendment. Id. at 737, 122 S.Ct. 1831. However, my colleagues do not examine the surrendered subject matter, and indeed they can not, for there is no narrowing amendment to define surrendered subject matter. The dependent claims were not rejected on any ground; they were simply objected to because they were in dependent form. The use of the inlet guide vanes was never discussed in the prosecution, and the guide vane clause was not amended in any dependent or independent claim. There was no prosecution for this issue based on prior art. [2] Unlike the Court's Festo presumption of prosecution history estoppel, which is limited by narrowing amendment, the panel majority's presumption of surrender is without limit. Honeywell, 370 F.3d at 1144 (Under such circumstances, the surrendered subject matter is defined by the cancellation of independent claims that do not include a particular limitation and the rewriting into independent form of dependent claims that do include that limitation. Equivalents are presumptively not available with respect to that added limitation.). In the remand decision from which this appeal is taken, the district court had recognized that the element for which equivalency was charged  the inlet guide vanes used to adjust a set point to avoid surge  had not been narrowed and thus did not fit the Festo mold. Nonetheless, the district court ruled that the Sundstrand apparatus and method with respect to the inlet guide vanes were foreseeable and that the rationale underlying the amendment bore more than a merely tangential relation to the Sundstrand equivalent. However, the district court declined to give its reasoning, stating that the record was too extensive and complex for the court to identify the facts on which its conclusion rested, and that it would be unduly burdensome to explain which evidence it credited. Honeywell, 2006 WL 2346446 at  n. 2. The district court stated that it seems quite intuitive to this lay court that measuring IGV position . . . is a reasonably obvious way  both at present and in 1982-83  to determine whether the APU is experiencing high flow or low flow. Id. at . The court also mentioned credibility, although it did not identify who or what it did not believe. The court concluded that the Sundstrand use of inlet guide vanes to control surge was foreseeable, although witnesses for both sides agreed that the use of inlet guide vanes for surge control was not known at the time of the Honeywell invention. Equivalency is determined as of the time of litigation, while foreseeability for equivalency purposes is determined at the time of the patent application. The Court in Festo explained that foreseeability means readily known equivalents, 535 U.S. at 740, 122 S.Ct. 1831, not unknown equivalents developed a decade later. Honeywell's use of inlet guide vanes was developed before 1982, and the Sundstrand inlet guide vanes were developed between 1990 and 1995. Sundstrand had argued at the jury trial that its guide vane system does not infringe, either literally or under the doctrine of equivalents, because it was designed to meet what Sundstrand calls the double solution problem, and that its system makes a different use of inlet guide vane position than does Honeywell. These differences were not disputed. My colleagues nonetheless find the Sundstrand device and method foreseeable based on a combination of prior art surge control devices, and hold that Honeywell could have described and claimed the Sundstrand technology a decade before it was developed by Sundstrand. In deciding whether the presumption of surrender has been rebutted, the question is whether the technological equivalent is embraced by subject matter that was relinquished during prosecution of the patent. This requires analysis of the prosecution history leading to cancellation of the original independent claim and rewriting of the original dependent claim in independent form. Patent claims are customarily presented in independent and dependent form, a practice encouraged by the Patent and Trademark Office, for it simplifies examination. When an original independent claim is cancelled, it is obligatory that the next dependent claim be placed in independent form. Even on the majority's analysis of the rebuttal criteria of foreseeability and tangentialness, the proper approach is to determine for equivalency was implicated in that cancellation. On remand, the district court attempted to apply the instructions from the Supreme Court and this court as to rebuttal of the presumption of prosecution history estoppel. The Court has guided that the foreseeability analysis must be directed to the particular equivalent in question, Id. at 740, 122 S.Ct. 1831. The particular equivalent is the Sundstrand device and method using the inlet guide vane positions to solve the so-called double solution problem that attends Sundstrand's choice of the DELPQP flow-related parameter, by blocking the control signal during high-flow conditions. Honeywell states that this is an equivalent use of inlet guide vanes, in the context of Honeywell's use of inlet guide vane position to adjust the set point against which the flow-related parameter is measured across the spectrum of flow conditions. The panel majority finds the Sundstrand device and method foreseeable and thus not reachable under the doctrine of equivalents. The panel majority cites two references that it designates as prior art that rendered the Sundstrand device foreseeable a decade before Sundstrand developed it. My colleagues focus first on a device called the L1011 developed in the late 1970s; this device made no use of inlet guide vanes, but instead used a totally different system that approached the problem of the ambiguity of a flow parameter at high flow conditions by use of a shock switch. I suppose the purpose of this reference is to show that the problem was not new; however, recognition of the problem does not render foreseeable Sundstrand's equivalent that was developed more than a decade later using inlet guide vanes. The panel majority also relies on the Glennon patent, and finds that in 1979 it was known that adjusting guide vane position has an impact on airflow. However, the issue is not the use of louvered vanes to control airflow, a known concept; the issue is whether it was foreseeable, at the time of the Honeywell patent application, to use inlet guide vanes for surge control in an accessory power unit in the manner of the Sundstrand device, as part of the decision logic for high-flow conditions when the DELPQP parameter produces an ambiguous signal. My colleagues suggest that testimony from Honeywell's witnesses Clark and Muller establish foreseeability of the Sundstrand equivalent, for they testified that Honeywell was working on the use of inlet guide vanes to improve the operation of a surge controller, and that if they knew about the Sundstrand problem they might have figured out how to solve it in the way that Sundstrand solved it a decade later. But these witnesses did not testify that Honeywell already had this knowledge, or that it was known to the prior art or otherwise was a known equivalent or reasonably foreseeable. It was undisputed that the Sundstrand equivalent was developed a decade later in full view of the Honeywell patents. My colleagues also state that the district court's findings are predicated on witness credibility, and thus are untouchable. The district court did not tell us what aspects strained its credulity, or indeed why the district court had sustained the jury verdict in 2001 if tainted by the incredibility of witnesses. Deference to a district court's findings on credibility is generally warranted, but when the issue is one of objective science/technology, more is required than a terse announcement by the court that no reasons will be given for its ruling. As explained in Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985), deference is warranted only when competing witnesses have told a coherent and facially plausible story that is not contradicted by extrinsic evidence, and when the finding is not internally inconsistent. Id. No deference is owed to a district court's conclusion predicated upon findings it did not state or explain. See Edwards v. Wyatt, 335 F.3d 261, 274-75 (3d Cir.2003). The district court's reluctance to state the facts on which its conclusion rests, as Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52 requires, negates the traditional deference. I accept that the record in this lengthy litigation is difficult to summarize, but I also accept  for it is uncontradicted  that the record is devoid of any evidence that the Sundstrand equivalent previously existed or was the readily known equivalent required by Festo. It was uncontradicted that the Sundstrand equivalent was developed years after the Honeywell application was filed and prosecuted, and only after considerable effort. Nothing in the record supports my colleagues' finding that the Sundstrand equivalent was foreseeable at the time the Honeywell patent applications were prosecuted. Simply presenting claims of varying scope, whether in independent or dependent form, is not a narrowing amendment or argument. The patent examining rules encourage, through lowered fees, the use of dependent claims, for it facilitates examination. It is routine for broader claims to be cancelled and dependent claims to be rewritten in independent form. This protocol has no relevance to whether a claimed element is amended or narrowed or argued during prosecution. It is the narrowing of scope during prosecution that produces the presumptive estoppel; claim elements and limitations that were not the subject of amendment or argument do not raise the Festo presumption, and should not be deemed to raise this court's new presumption. Cancelling an independent claim is not an estoppel-generating act as to elements whose scope was not amended or otherwise restricted during prosecution. Equivalency is determined element by element, Warner-Jenkinson, 520 U.S. at 29, 117 S.Ct. 1040, yet on the panel majority's presumption of surrender, there is no restricting action by which to measure what was surrendered. In Festo the Court was explicit that the burden is to show[] that the amendment does not surrender the particular equivalent in question. 535 U.S. at 740, 122 S.Ct. 1831. My colleagues err in now holding that all equivalents of an element presented by dependent claim are presumed surrendered by simply cancelling the independent claim.