Opinion ID: 1190344
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Identification of the Invention.

Text: L.A. Biomed complains that the district court improperly blurred an important distinction between Dr. White's O-ring GAD design and the successful Z-ring GAD device when the court held that L.A. Biomed's contract claim would be limited to whether Dr. White invented an overlapping GAD-graft device at L.A. Biomed. Given the exact terms of the agreement Dr. White signed, which required him to disclose every possible patentable device, this contention has merit. It is clear that more precise jury instructions on this central point of contention needed to have been given. We leave the rectification of this issue to the district court on remand. However, given the parties' manifest willingness endlessly to dispute on appeal who argued what and when, and who presented what in the multiple conferences on instructions, we would advise both the district court and the partiesnow that they will have a fresh startto take great care to respect Rule 51 and to leave nothing either to inference or to the imagination. We recognize the convoluted history of this case in the trial court, but it turns out that allowing the parties to deem preserved previous objections created an unnecessary Rule 51 battlefield on appeal.