Opinion ID: 212477
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Crookston Deposition

Text: The linchpin for the district court's award of attorney fees was its determination that Old Reliable had no reasonable basis for maintaining its infringement action following the September 26, 2007, Crookston deposition. In the court's view, Old Reliable may have had some basis for its contention that the VT-2 product did not anticipate the '950 patent prior to the deposition, but when Crookston testified that Cornell's prior art VT-2 product did [e]xactly the same thing as the commercial embodiment of the '950 patent, it was apparent that [the '950] patent was anticipated and any further action against Cornell for infringement was baseless. Attorney Fees Decision, 2010 WL 446199, at , 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8756, at  (emphasis omitted) (footnote and internal quotation marks omitted). We disagree. Anticipation requires that all of the claim elements and their limitations are shown in a single prior art reference. In re Skvorecz, 580 F.3d 1262, 1266 (Fed.Cir.2009); see also Advanced Display Sys., Inc. v. Kent State Univ., 212 F.3d 1272, 1282 (Fed.Cir.2000) (explaining that invalidity by anticipation requires that the four corners of a single, prior art document describe every element of the claimed invention, either expressly or inherently). Regardless of whether the VT-2 and the commercial embodiment of the '950 patent did [e]xactly the same thing, there could be no anticipation unless the VT-2 disclosed, either expressly or inherently, all the structural limitations contained in the asserted apparatus claims. See Skvorecz, 580 F.3d at 1268 (explaining that a prior art device did not anticipate because it did not contain the offset structure disclosed in the asserted claims); Applied Med. Res. Corp. v. United States Surgical Corp., 147 F.3d 1374, 1380 (Fed. Cir.1998) (emphasizing that a prior art device does not anticipate simply by possessing identically named parts, unless these parts also have the same structure or otherwise satisfy the claim limitations); In re Ruskin, 52 CCPA 1557, 347 F.2d 843, 846 (1965) (Even where a prior art device is the functional equivalent of a patented product, it does not anticipate unless it discloses the structure required by the asserted claims.). Because Old Reliable pointed to alleged structural differences between the VT-2 and the commercial embodiment of the '950 patent, it was not required to concede that its patent was anticipated even following inventor testimony that the two products were functionally equivalent. [2]