Opinion ID: 211242
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Vaughan's Business Records as Infringement Evidence.

Text: 27 LD confronted Vaughan with allegations of infringement of the '414 patent, and in June of 2000, Vaughan consulted with patent counsel to evaluate the '414 patent and Vaughan's potentially infringing Rotamix design. At about the same time, Vaughan commissioned AEA Technology to perform two different computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies to analyze the flow patterns in its tanks. The first study, labeled PX20, evaluated a generic 50-foot-diameter tank that was 30-feet high. The second, labeled PX19, was a study conducted for a proposed tank at Merced, California that demonstrated the tank's mixing capabilities to the city's engineer. Dorsch testified that these studies were representative of the flow patterns generated by Vaughan's Rotamix systems. 28 Vaughan provided patent counsel with these studies to assist in forming an opinion relative to infringement. Based on the CFD studies and the tank designs, patent counsel rendered an opinion for Vaughan concluding that its Rotamix design did not infringe the '414 patent because it did not produce substantially helical flow. 29 LD relies on Vaughan's CFD studies as evidence of both infringement and willfulness. The report not only shows toroidial 1 flow in the vertical plane with downward velocity in the center of the tank and upward velocity at the walls of the tank, but it also indicates there was a concern over terrodial [sic] flow. Moreover, as LD notes, the author of the PX20 report explained that the momentum from the nozzles pushes the fluid to the side walls of the tank and then changes direction and heads up the side walls. LD's own expert, Lueptow, relied on these same vertical vector plots to express a similar opinion that Vaughan's tanks generate helical flow.