Opinion ID: 209664
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Asserted Claims

Text: 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.