Opinion ID: 212477
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Rice Deposition

Text: The trial court also pointed to testimony from Rice, Old Reliable's expert, in support of its conclusion that an award of attorney fees was warranted. The court stated: On March 3, 2008, plaintiff's expert, James Rice, PhD, conceded that [the] felt facer of the accused VT-1 product was integral with the spaced block[s] just as the OSB of the non-infringing VT-2 was integral with the spaced blocks. This rendered the presence of the board in the VT-2 irrelevant[,] making it invalidating prior art. Pursuing the infringement suit after this evidence is further evidence of [Old Reliable's] bad faith. Attorney Fees Decision, 2010 WL 446199, at  n. 20, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8756, at  n. 20. On review, we cannot agree that Old Reliable's decision to continue its infringement action after Rice's testimony was objectively unreasonable or evidence of bad faith. [4] Rice testified that when a block of insulating material is manufactured from polyisocyanurate, the foam insulation will stick to anything it touches and become integral with that object. The question of whether the foam insulation becomes integral with the OSB, however, is different than the question of whether the spaced blocks are integral with the main portion of insulating material as required by the asserted claims. See '950 patent, col.8 ll.1-2. Rice asserted, moreover, that the OSB in the VT-2 product does not become part of the `main portion' of the insulating material because, unlike the felt facing, OSB is an inflexible separate structural component that changes the overall structure of the roof board. Invalidity Decision, 609 F.Supp.2d at 747 (footnote omitted). This testimony clearly supported Old Reliable's contention that the VT-2 did not anticipate because it did not meet all of the structural limitations of independent claim 1 of the '950 patent. Thus, even following Rice's deposition, Old Reliable had a non-frivolous basis for asserting that, due to the intervening layer of OSB between the insulation and the spaced blocks, the VT-2 was not invalidating prior art.