Opinion ID: 209664
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Targus Patents

Text: The jury found that all claims of the '897 patent and '131 patent were invalid, and the trial court entered judgment accordingly. Targus argues that the trial court erred because only claim 69 of the '897 patent and claims 1 and 50 of the '131 patent were asserted and at issue. Adept responds that all claims of the two patents were placed in issue by the declaratory judgment count in its complaint. If the evidence at trial proved that all the claims were invalid, Adept maintains, the trial judge properly entered judgment on the jury verdict. We agree with Targus that the unasserted claims were not at issue, and thus the trial court erred. First, the scope of Adept's complaint is less than clear. Adept requested a declaratory judgment with respect to the invalidity of Targus's asserted claims, an apparent reference to Targus's assertions of infringement against Adept and its customers prior to the filing of the lawsuit. (First Am. Compl. ¶¶ 57-58.) The complaint does not specify which claims fall into that category. In any event, a reference in the complaint is not sufficient to support a judgment that particular claims are invalid; the specific validity of those claims must have been at issue during the trial and actually litigated by the parties. Datascope Corp. v. SMEC, Inc., 776 F.2d 320, 327 (Fed.Cir.1985). Second, the parties' Joint Final Pretrial Statement demonstrates that only claim 69 of the '897 patent and claims 1 and 50 of the '131 patent were at issue during the trial. In that document, the parties stipulated that the asserted claims of the '897 patent and '131 patent were claim 69 and claims 1 and 50, respectively. (Joint Final Pretrial Statement 31.) Then, under the heading Concise Statement of Issues of Fact and Issues of Law Which Remain for Determination by the Trial Court, the parties included the following two questions: Are the asserted claims of the Shaffer-Moore patents valid? and Are the asserted Shaffer-Moore patents infringed, literally or under the doctrine of equivalents? ( Id. at 32-22.) There were no references whatsoever to the unasserted claims of the '897 patent and '131 patent. Third, at trial, neither party presented evidence with respect to the unasserted claims. Adept's expert, Dr. Brody, expressly limited his validity analysis and opinions to claim 69 of the '897 patent and claims 1 and 50 of the '131 patent. (Trial Tr. 148-49, 184-85, 198-200, 208-10, 213, Oct. 16, 2006.) This is true with respect to both Adept's anticipation and obviousness contentions and its argument that the claims of the '131 patent were invalid due to an on-sale bar. Adept's argument that it was unnecessary for its validity expert to put forth a claim-by-claim analysis of the unasserted claims is simply incorrect. Under the patent statute, the validity of each claim must be considered separately. See 35 U.S.C. § 282 (Each claim of a patent (whether in independent, dependent, or multiple dependent form) shall be presumed valid independently of the validity of other claims. . . .); Schumer v. Lab. Computer Sys., Inc., 308 F.3d 1304, 1316 (Fed.Cir.2002); Sandt Tech., Ltd. v. Resco Metal & Plastics Corp., 264 F.3d 1344, 1356 (Fed.Cir.2001). In this case, it is clear from the parties' pretrial statement and from the trial proceedings that the unasserted claims were neither litigated nor placed in issue during the trial. We therefore reverse the trial court's judgment of invalidity with respect to the unasserted claims, i.e., all the claims of the '897 patent except claim 69 and all the claims of the '131 patent except claims 1 and 50. [9]
The jury also found all twelve of the asserted claims in the Moore-Shaffer patents invalid. Targus chose not to appeal the trial court's denial of its motion for judgment as a matter of law that the asserted claims are not invalid, and thus does not challenge on appeal the sufficiency of the evidence in support of the jury's verdict. Instead, Targus appeals only the trial court's denial of its motion for a new trial on the validity of these claims. Applying Eleventh Circuit law, we review the trial court's denial of a motion for a new trial for abuse of discretion. Hicks v. Talbott Recovery Sys., Inc., 196 F.3d 1226, 1242 (11th Cir.1999). When a jury verdict is judged to be against the great weight of the evidence, the trial judge has authority to grant a motion for a new trial. Id.; Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Mary Kay Kane, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2806 (2d ed.1995). Targus argues on appeal that the jury's invalidity findings were tainted by the erroneous characterization of the Neville patents by Adept's expert, Dr. Brody. In particular, Targus complains that Dr. Brody repeatedly asserted that the Neville patents teach real-time spatial calculations of the sort used by Targus and claimed in some of the Moore-Shaffer patents. Because Dr. Brody testified that the asserted claims were either anticipated by the Neville patents or rendered obvious by the combination of the Neville patents and other prior art, Targus believes it is entitled to a new trial on the validity of the asserted claims. We agree with Targus, but only in part. Targus requests on appeal a new trial on whether the asserted claims of the Moore-Shaffer patents that concern `on line calculations' are invalid. (Appellant's Reply Br. 22-23.) In its brief, Targus identifies only two asserted claims that involve on-line or real-time calculations claim 46 of the '868 patent and claim 10 of the '810 patent. (Appellant's Br. 49-50.) Our review of the record confirms that those are the only asserted claims directed to Targus's real-time system. Our review further confirms that Dr. Brody's testimony with regard to the alleged real-time aspect of the Neville patents was directed to the validity of only those two claims and not to the other asserted claims. As explained above in the discussion on the Adept patents, Dr. Brody's characterization of the scope of the Neville patent disclosure was mistaken. Furthermore, the primary if not the entire evidence on which the jury could have relied in finding claim 46 of the '868 patent and claim 10 of the '810 patent invalid was Dr. Brody's erroneous testimony. Under these circumstances, the trial judge should have granted the motion for a new trial with regard to these two claims because the great weight of the evidence in the record was against the jury's verdict. This does not preclude the possibility that other evidence produced at a retrial would be sufficient to establish invalidity. The failure to have granted Targus's motion was an abuse of discretion; accordingly, we vacate the trial court's judgment that claim 46 of the '868 patent and claim 10 of the '810 patent are invalid, and remand for a new trial on their validity. We affirm the trial court's judgment that the remaining asserted claims of the Moore-Shaffer patents are invalid.