Opinion ID: 209986
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Materiality of the abandonment finding in the Springs litigation

Text: HT next argues that the district court improperly discounted the materiality of the finding in the Springs litigation that Judkins had abandoned, suppressed, or concealed his invention. HT insists that the finding was per se material under 37 C.F.R. § 1.56, the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, and caselaw. The district court erred, HT says, by analyzing whether the finding in the Springs litigation was substantively correct without regard for its per se materiality and the issue of whether it was properly disclosed. The district court concluded that [t]here were no controlling adverse decisions regarding the validity of the '120 Patent when it issued. Judkins, 514 F.Supp.2d at 766. Specifically, the Board's finding of abandonment had been overturned, and the effect of [the finding in the Springs litigation] on the validity of the '120 Patent can be reasonably questioned, not least because Judkins had not been not a party to that litigation. Id. The district court balanced the unfavorable finding in the Springs litigation against its own earlier reversal of the Board's decision awarding priority against Judkins and concluded that [t]he status of the '120 Patent is open to reasonable debate on this point. Id. We do not agree that the district court impermissibly questioned the substance of the finding in the Springs litigation. Rather, the court took the finding as a given but said it was not dispositive of bad faith in light of other evidence. Indeed, the court said the effect of [the finding] on the validity of the '120 Patent can reasonably be questioned, not that the finding can reasonably be questioned. This distinction is reflected in the district court's statement about controlling adverse precedents and its weighing of favorable versus unfavorable precedents. We cannot say that this amounted to clear error on the part of the district court.