Opinion ID: 759520
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: District Court's Refusal to Consider New Evidence

Text: 32 Prior to remand, this case had been tried twice on the issue of equivalent infringement, once to a jury and a second time to the court. Defendants now argue that the district court erred reversibly in refusing on remand to consider their new evidence of lack of equivalent infringement. We review the district court's refusal to allow Defendants to supplement the record on remand for abuse of discretion. See Westvaco Corp. v. International Paper Co., 991 F.2d 735, 745, 26 USPQ2d 1353, 1362 (Fed.Cir.1993) (applying regional circuit law); Rollins v. Fort Bend Indep. School Dist., 89 F.3d 1205, 1220 (5th Cir.1996) (abuse of discretion standard). 33 Defendants assert that this new evidence showed, inter alia, the substantiality of the differences between the accused processes and method claim 1, and that Insituform witnesses had not been truthful during testimony taken at the 1995 trial. Further, asserts Defendants, this court on remand gave the district court a directive to make new findings in accordance with the corrected claim construction, presumably necessitating at least the submission of further evidence. 34 We are unpersuaded, however, that the reasons cited by Defendants for the district court to accept supplemental evidence mandate its acceptance. First, our reversal today of the district court's finding of equivalent infringement of the multiple needle process shows that sufficient evidence was already present in the record based upon which the district court could have correctly decided the issue without submission of new evidence. Nor have Defendants shown that the evidence could not have been found and submitted at the first trial. Second, a review of the relevant language in Insituform I does not reveal a mandate for further, broader fact-finding by the district court. We therefore conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion on remand in refusing to admit Defendants' supplemental evidence.