Opinion ID: 210374
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The District Court's Identification of the Ordinary Observer

Text: A question that is central to this case, and every design patent case, is the identity of the ordinary observer of the design at issue, which in this case is the design of trigger sprayer shrouds. This test requires an objective evaluation of the question of whether a hypothetical person called the ordinary observer would find substantial similarities between the patented design and the accused design, so as to be deceived into purchasing the accused design believing it is the patented design. Gorham, 81 U.S. at 528. Calmar argues that the appropriate ordinary observer in this case is the retail consumer who purchases the retail product that incorporates the sprayer shroud, such as the retail purchaser of a bottle of liquid window cleaner with a trigger sprayer device attached to the bottle's cap and a tube extending into the liquid to extract the liquid from the bottle as a spray during retail use. If the ordinary observer is found to be the retail consumer that purchases the shroud of the trigger sprayer device as it is incorporated into a retail product, then it is much more likely that the ordinary observer would find substantial similarities between the patented and accused designs sufficient to be deceived into thinking that Arminak's AA Trigger shroud is one of the patented designs. The district court disagreed with Calmar and found that the ordinary observer of trigger sprayer shrouds is not the retail consumer, but the purchaser of trigger sprayer mechanisms for assembly and incorporation into the product that is sold to retail consumers. The record clearly shows that Calmar never sold any of its patented shrouds directly to retail consumers. Arminak, 424 F.Supp.2d at 1198. If the ordinary observer is the contract buyer or industrial purchaser of trigger sprayers, then the undisputed material facts in the record establish that such a purchaser would not find substantial similarity between the patented and accused shrouds, and therefore would not be deceived into thinking that Arminak's AA Trigger shroud is one of the patented designs. Id. at 1201-02. The Supreme Court's Gorham opinion, which dealt with an accused design's infringement of a design patent on silverware handle designs, expressly excluded experts from the category of persons who are ordinary observers. Under the facts of Gorham, it was the observation of a person versed in designs in the particular trade in questionof a person engaged in the manufacturer or sale of articles containing such designsof a person accustomed to compare such designs one with another, who sees and examines the articles containing them side by side, id. at 527, that was explicitly rejected by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court in Gorham contrasted this group of expert examiners, whose observations it rejected, with ordinary observers, who it described as people possessing ordinary acuteness, bringing to the examination of the article upon which the design has been placed that degree of observation which men of ordinary intelligence give. Id. at 528. The Court emphasized that [i]t is persons of this latter class who are the principle purchasers of the articles to which designs have given novel appearances, and if they are misled, and induced to purchase what is not the article they supposed it to be . . . the patentees are injured, and that advantage of a market which the patent was granted to secure is destroyed. Id. To be effective, design patent protection must focus upon observations by ordinary observers, by those who buy and use the article bearing the design in question. Id. The unanswered question remaining after Gorham is whether these ordinary observers of which the Supreme Court spoke can be commercial or industrial buyers of designed items that are used as component parts assembled into a retail product. Although we have not squarely addressed that question until now, in the Goodyear case (which dealt with patented tire tread designs commercially embodied on Goodyear's truck tires) we stated that the focus of the ordinary observer test is on the actual product that is presented for purchase, and the ordinary purchaser of that product. 162 F.3d at 1117 (emphasis added). There we found that the ordinary observer of the patented tread designs was a truck driver and a truck fleet operator because the products containing the patented and accused designs were tires used on trucks, even though the design patent at issue was not limited to truck tires. In KeyStone, we found that the ordinary observers of patented wall blocks were visitors to trade shows. 997 F.2d at 1451. We made that finding even though the accused wall blocks, when stacked to form a wall, were substantially similar to a wall of patented wall blocks. We held that the visual observation of the ordinary observer should focus only on the unassembled patented design of the individual block, not the blocks that were stacked together as an assembled wall. Id. at 1451. Accordingly, we concluded in KeyStone that the `ordinary purchaser' for the purpose of the block design patent is a purchaser of the patented block, not a purchaser of an assembled wall. Id. In 1933, when the regional United States Courts of Appeals still had jurisdiction over patent law issues, the Sixth Circuit noted the substantial number of prior art design patents in the field of automobile electric cigar lighters and ashtrays. Adhering to the precedent of Gorham v. White , the court held: The ordinary observer is not any observer, but one who, with less than the trained facilities of the expert, is a purchaser of things of similar design, or one interested in the subject . . . one who, though not an expert, has reasonable familiarity with such objects [as an automobile ash tray and cigar lighter], and is capable of forming a reasonable judgment when confronted with a design therefor as to whether it presents to his eye distinctiveness from or similarity with those which have preceded it. Applied Arts Corp. v. Grand Rapids Metalcraft Corp., 67 F.2d 428, 430 (6th Cir. 1933). More recently, two district court opinions found that institutional purchasers, not end-user consumers, were the appropriate persons to be considered ordinary observers when the design-patented item is a component of the product that is sold. E.g. Spotless Enters., Inc. v. A & E Prods. Group, L.P., 294 F.Supp.2d 322, 347 (E.D.N.Y.2003) (design patent for lingerie hangers; ordinary observer was not the general public, but the commercial buyer for garment manufacturers, who then resold garments on the hangers to retail stores); Puritan-Bennett Corp. v. Penox Techs., Inc., No. IP02-0762-C-M/S, 2004 WL 866618, at  (S.D.Ind. Mar.2, 2004) (design patent for portable liquid oxygen tanks; ordinary observer must include medical equipment distributors, at the least, and possibly, hospitals and physicians who provide the tanks by prescription to patients), aff'd 121 Fed.Appx. 397 (Fed.Cir.2005). Calmar cites to our Contessa opinion in support of its contention that in this case the ordinary observer must be the retail consumer. In Contessa, we stated: for purposes of design patent infringement, the ordinary observer analysis is not limited to those features visible during only one phase or portion of the normal use lifetime of an accused product. Instead, the comparison must extend to all ornamental features visible during normal use of the product, i.e., beginning after completion of manufacture or assembly and ending with the ultimate destruction, loss, or disappearance of the article. 282 F.3d at 1380 (citations omitted) (emphases added). We disagree with Calmar that the quoted language from Contessa supports Calmar's contention that the retail consumer must be the ordinary observer of trigger sprayer shrouds. This quoted language does not describe who the ordinary observer is. Rather, it explains what features of the patented design must be included as observed in the ordinary observer testor in other words, what features of the patented design the ordinary observer is to examine in determining if there is substantial similarity with an accused design. Calmar also argues that the purchasers of the shrouds themselves (who Calmar repeatedly refers to as the sophisticated purchaser who is well-versed in the trade) do not use the shrouds and therefore cannot be the ordinary observer. Appellant's Br. at 30-31. Again, we disagree with Calmar. The industrial purchaser of the trigger sprayer shrouds for manufacturing assembly does indeed use the shroudsto cover trigger sprayer mechanisms that are assembled with the bottle, the bottle's cap, the liquid contained in the bottle, and the label on the bottle, all of which assembled together create the retail product. Consequently, the purchaser of the patented and accused designs in this case is the purchaser of one of a retail product's component parts that is thereafter assembled with other parts to make the retail product. To hold that such a purchaser is the appropriate hypothetical ordinary observer fits squarely with our precedent that the ordinary observer is a person who is either a purchaser of, or sufficiently interested in, the item that displays the patented designs and who has the capability of making a reasonably discerning decision when observing the accused item's design whether the accused item is substantially the same as the item claimed in the design patent. We agree, therefore, with the district court that the ordinary observer of the sprayer shroud designs at issue in this case is the industrial purchaser or contract buyer of sprayer shrouds for businesses that assemble the retail product from the component parts of the retail product bottle, the cap, the sprayer tube, the liquid, the label, and the trigger sprayer device atop the cap, so as to create a single product sold to the retail consumer. Here, the patented design is only the shroud of the sprayer device. The three physical exhibits submitted for examination on appeal are trigger sprayer devices attached to bottle caps with plastic tubes for insertion into contained liquid, not the bottles, not the liquid into which the sprayer tube is inserted during normal use, and not the label of the retail product. Accordingly, we hold that the ordinary observer of the trigger sprayer shrouds in this case is, as the district court found, the contract or industrial buyer for companies that purchase the stand-alone trigger sprayer devices, not the retail purchasers of the finished product.