Opinion ID: 4406177
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Exclusion of Utility Patents Evidence

Text: A Top also appeals a related issue—the district court’s de‐ cision to exclude evidence of various utility patents, which A Top contends demonstrate the functionality of the claimed Chambord trade dress features. A district court may exclude relevant evidence where its probative value is substantially outweighed by, for example, a risk of unfair prejudice or con‐ fusing the issues. Fed. R. Evid. 403. We review evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion and will reverse “only if no rea‐ sonable person would agree with the district court’s view.” French presses can still function when made out of other materials, like plastic, and that the metal and glass used for the Chambord design do not confer any particular cost or quality advantage for the product. No. 18‐3020 15 United States v. Proano, 912 F.3d 431, 438 (7th Cir. 2019). Fur‐ thermore, we accord Rule 403 determinations “‘special defer‐ ence,’ because only ‘in an extreme case are appellate judges competent to second‐guess the judgment of the person on the spot, the trial judge.’” Id. at 440 (quoting United States v. Jack‐ son, 898 F.3d 760, 764 (7th Cir. 2018)). As noted above, courts consider “the existence of a utility patent, expired or unexpired, that involves or describes the functionality of an item’s design element” in considering whether a claimed trade dress is functional. Ga.–Pac. Con‐ sumer Prods., 647 F.3d at 727–28.5 As the Supreme Court has explained, a utility patent is “strong evidence that the features therein claimed are functional.” TrafFix Devices, 532 U.S. at 29. In other words, “if the ‘central advance’ claimed in the utility patent matches the ‘essential feature’ of the trademark, there is strong evidence that the design is functional.” Ga.–Pac. Con‐ sumer Prods., 647 F.3d at 728 (quoting TrafFix Devices, 532 U.S. at 30). Evidence of utility patents came up during Mr. Anders’s examination. On direct examination, Bodum asked Mr. An‐ ders a total of seven questions about utility patents and showed him one patent that A Top’s expert had cited in his report. Mr. Anders testified that, though a utility patent claiming a feature is evidence that this feature is functional in the trade dress sense, he did not find any utility patents cov‐ ering the Chambord trade dress features. He believed the pa‐ 5 A utility patent covers “any new and useful process, machine, man‐ ufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” 35 U.S.C. § 101. 16 No. 18‐3020 tent A Top’s expert cited only disclosed the plunger rod en‐ gaging with the cylindrical walls of the carafe, which Mr. An‐ ders explained is a feature in all French presses and has no bearing on the Chambord trade dress. On cross examination, A Top asked Mr. Anders many ad‐ ditional questions about patents and showed him approxi‐ mately ten utility patents. A Top questioned Mr. Anders about whether the patents disclosed the same elements Bodum claims as part of the Chambord trade dress—a domed lid, a handle, and a circular knob atop the plunger. However, counsel only provided Mr. Anders with the pictures from the patents, not the portion of the patents explaining the claims. Mr. Anders testified that he believed utility patents describe the claims in words, not in the illustrations, so he would not agree the patents disclosed any elements of the Chambord trade dress based solely on a review of the pictures. Bodum’s counsel objected to the admission of the patents as evidence. The court provisionally admitted the patents for Bodum’s redirect examination of Mr. Anders and then heard arguments on the objection at the next break in the trial. Bodum argued the patents A Top sought to have admitted were irrelevant because they were not patents for any Bodum or A Top product and were not patents of identical designs. Bodum also argued the proposed exhibits were incomplete as they were only a portion of the patents. The district court re‐ quested briefing on the issue of whether utility patents for similar but not identical products are relevant to the question of functionality and requested complete copies of each patent. After reviewing the parties’ arguments and the entire pa‐ tents, the district court excluded them from evidence. The court explained it did not matter that the patents were for No. 18‐3020 17 other parties’ products but it did matter whether the features Bodum claimed as part of its trade dress were disclosed in the patents. The court asked A Top to point to language in any of the patents it sought to admit that claimed as part of the pa‐ tent “any of the features that [Bodum] says are part of its trade dress.” A Top could not, however, find any such language. Though it continued to insist the patents described knobs and domed lids, it could not point to any language in the patents to support this contention. The patent A Top claimed “most illuminating” described: “The system of Claim 1 or the cover means comprising removable cover for the drinking vessel adapted to fit over the top of the vessel, having an opening through which the push rod extends the sliding movement relative to the cover.”6 But A Top was unable to point to a single patent that claimed a domed lid, a C‐shaped handle, feet on the bottom of the carafe, or a metallic castle‐shaped cage— the design elements Bodum claims as its trade dress. The district court reviewed the jury instruction on whether a patent discloses the “practical advantages” of the design and explained that TrafFix Devices requires that the pa‐ tent somewhere (not necessarily in the claims portion of the patent) claim the trade dress features in some “significant way.” Here, none of the patents did so. Though some of the French presses in the patent pictures had a handle, feet, or something on top of the plunger, the court did not think that “bears on the question of whether it’s functional as … trade dress law defines that term.” The court elaborated: 6 During argument on the objection, A Top described this as the Banks patent, 5,618,570, which does not appear to be in the record and is not mentioned in either party’s appellate briefs. 18 No. 18‐3020 [T]here is a massive potential for jury confusion here if these things are used in the way, frankly, that they were used during the cross‐examina‐ tion of the [ ] expert. You put a picture up there, that’s got a handle, it’s got a knob, it’s got a plunger, it’s cylindrical like yours, that’s not what the inquiry is. The inquiry isn’t whether somebody has drawn this picture before. The inquiry is whether … the features are claimed in a patent in a way that shows that they have some sort of a function. The court then concluded: “I don’t think it’s relevant. If it’s relevant, it has teeny teeny probative value, massive potential for jury confusion. It’s excluded under Rule 403.” The court did not permit A Top to use the patent evidence with its ex‐ pert and gave the jury a curative instruction: “During the cross‐examination of witness Robert Anders, he was shown certain pages from certain patents. I have excluded those pa‐ tents from the evidence in this case. You are not to consider them for any purpose.” The district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding this evidence. The patents A Top sought to introduce do not claim any of the features that comprise the claimed Cham‐ bord trade dress. See TrafFix Devices, 532 U.S. at 29 (utility pa‐ tents are evidence “that the features therein claimed are func‐ tional” (emphasis added)). That the patents disclose a plunger and cylindrical carafe are irrelevant because Bodum does not claim those elements as part of its trade dress. And the pic‐ tures in the patents showing French presses with handles, domed lids, or knobs are irrelevant to the legal question of functionality because the patents do not claim any of those No. 18‐3020 19 features as part of the patented invention. Permitting the jury to view and consider the patents would cause confusion as to the appropriate inquiry for functionality. A Top also claims that whether a patent discloses a fea‐ ture’s utility is a question of fact for the jury and, as such, the district court erred in excluding the patents from the jury’s consideration. In Thomas & Betts, we explained that a “utility patent must be examined in detail to determine whether or not the disclosed configuration is really primarily functional or just incidentally appears in the disclosure of a patent.” 138 F.3d at 300 (quoting J. Thomas McCarthy, 1 McCarthy on Trademarks and Unfair Competition § 6:10 (4th ed. 1996)). There, the district court determined at summary judgment that because the claimed feature was part of a patent and did not appear incidentally, it was primarily a functional feature. Id. On appeal, we determined that this conclusion “necessi‐ tated a weighing of the evidence,” so a jury should have had the opportunity to decide how much weight to give the patent considering all the other evidence presented on the function‐ ality issue. Id. The district court’s decision here is consistent with Thomas & Betts. The court excluded the evidence under Rule 403, an evidentiary rule that tasks the judge with balanc‐ ing the exclusion of relevant evidence with the risk of harm from admission. The district court did not decide the func‐ tionality question; it determined that the patent evidence, while relevant to the question of functionality, posed too sig‐ nificant a risk of jury confusion (an issue not raised by the pa‐ tent evidence in Thomas & Betts). This is not one of those extreme cases in which we second‐ guess the trial judge’s weighing of the probative value of the evidence with the potential for jury confusion on a Rule 403 20 No. 18‐3020 issue. We affirm the court’s denial of A Top’s motion for a new trial.7