Opinion ID: 1190344
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Corroboration Instruction was Prejudicial Error.

Text: L.A. Biomed alleges that the final paragraph of the Reduce To Practice instruction (the corroboration instruction) erroneously misstated the law because it failed to inform the jury that any admission against interest by Dr. White need not be corroborated by independent evidence. L.A. Biomed is correct. The first sentence of the corroboration instruction summarizes an accepted principle of patent and inventorship law: To prove reduction to practice by testimony from a person who claims to have reduced to practice a device, that testimony must be corroborated by independent evidence. See, e.g., Cooper, 154 F.3d at 1330. The instruction goes on to explain what is sufficient corroborating evidence. L.A. Biomed argues not that the corroboration instruction itself misstates the law, but that the district court misstated the law by failing to acknowledge that an inventor's admissions-against-interest need not be corroborated. We conclude that the corroboration instruction was given in error. The Federal Circuit's predecessor court has held that in a dispute over the date of conception of an invention, all that is necessary to constitute an admission is a previous statement by an adversary party which is inconsistent with the position he is taking in litigation. Technitrol, Inc. v. United States, 194 Ct.Cl. 596, 440 F.2d 1362, 1370 (1971). In other words, although corroborating evidence is required of an inventor pursuing a patent to prove the date of conception or reduction to practice of an invention, such corroborating evidence is not required when offered by an adversary party against an inventor as an admission-against interest. Thus, we conclude that the corroboration instruction, without a corresponding admission against interest instruction, was given in error because it misstated the law by requiring corroborating evidence. [7] Furthermore, we conclude that this instruction was prejudicial. In the PTO declaration, Dr. White stated that he performed bench testing at L.A. Biomed on a version of the GAD that had the features of a wireform supported prosthesis which could be overlapped with another similar prosthesisone of the features L.A. Biomed argued was central to the invention of the Z-ring GAD device. He stated further in the PTO declaration that the bench tests indicated that one graft could be supported within another. Dr. White argues that this was not an admission against interest and thus could not be prejudicial because the PTO declaration was consistent with his position at trial. We disagree, however, and conclude that a reasonable juror could have found that this statement from the PTO declaration constituted at least some convincing evidence that Dr. White conceived and/or reduced to practice the patented GAD at L.A. Biomed. Yet, the corroboration instruction inappropriately prohibited the jury from making such a finding unless there was also sufficient independent corroborating evidence supporting it. Thus, because a reasonable juror could have based a verdict in favor of L.A. Biomed on Dr. White's declaration in the absence of the corroboration instruction, we conclude that it was prejudicial and a new trial is necessary for this reason as well. See Heller, 8 F.3d at 1441.