Opinion ID: 764877
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Jefferts' Alleged Public Use

Text: 68 The law has long looked with disfavor upon invalidating patents on the basis of mere testimonial evidence absent other evidence that corroborates that testimony. The Supreme Court recognized over one hundred years ago that testimony concerning invalidating activities can be unsatisfactory due to the forgetfulness of witnesses, their liability to mistakes, their proneness to recollect things as the party calling them would have them recollect them, aside from the temptation to actual perjury. The Barbed Wire Patent, 143 U.S. 275, 284, 12 S.Ct. 443, 36 L.Ed. 154 (1891). Accordingly, [w]itnesses whose memories are prodded by the eagerness of interested parties to elicit testimony favorable to themselves are not usually to be depended upon for accurate information, and therefore such testimony rarely satisfies the burden upon the interested party, usually the accused infringer, to prove invalidity by clear and convincing evidence. See id. 8 69 Mere testimony concerning invalidating activities is received with further skepticism because such activities are normally documented by tangible evidence such as devices, schematics, or other materials that typically accompany the inventive process. See Woodland Trust v. Flowertree Nursery, Inc., 148 F.3d 1368, 1373, 47 USPQ2d 1363, 1367 (Fed.Cir.1998) (noting that the skepticism with which mere testimony of invalidating activity is received is reinforced, in modern times, by the ubiquitous paper trail of virtually all commercial activity. It is rare indeed that some physical record (e.g., a written document such as notes, letters, invoices, notebooks, or a sketch or drawing or photograph showing the device, a model, or some other contemporaneous record) does not exist.); Eibel Process Co. v. Minnesota & Ontario Paper Co., 261 U.S. 45, 60, 43 S.Ct. 322, 67 L.Ed. 523 (1923) (holding that the oral testimony of prior public use falls short of being enough to overcome the presumption of novelty from the granting of the patent when there is not a single written record, letter or specification of prior date to [the patentee's] application that discloses any such discovery by anyone....). 70 While this court has in the past applied the requirement of corroboration more often in the context of priority disputes under 35 U.S.C. § 102(g), 9 corroboration has been required to prove invalidity under other subsections of § 102 as well. 10 In the context of § 102(f) (derivation) and § 102(g) (priority), we have stated that the case law is unequivocal that an inventor's testimony respecting facts surrounding a claim of derivation or priority of invention cannot, standing alone, rise to the level of clear and convincing proof. Price v. Symsek, 988 F.2d 1187, 1194, 26 USPQ2d 1031, 1036 (Fed.Cir.1993). No principled reason appears for applying a different rule when other subsections of § 102 are implicated: a witness's uncorroborated testimony is equally suspect as clear and convincing evidence if he testifies concerning the use of the invention in public before invention by the patentee (§ 102(a)), use of the invention in public one year before the patentee filed his patent (§ 102(b)), or invention before the patentee (§ 102(g)). 71 Moreover, the need for corroboration exists regardless whether the party testifying concerning the invalidating activity is interested in the outcome of the litigation (e.g., because that party is the accused infringer) or is uninterested but testifying on behalf of an interested party. That corroboration is required in the former circumstance cannot be debated. See, e.g., Stevenson v. International Trade Comm'n, 67 C.C.P.A. 109, 612 F.2d 546, 550, 204 USPQ 276, 280 (CCPA 1979) (Uncorroborated oral testimony of prior inventors or users with a demonstrated financial interest in the outcome of the litigation is insufficient to provide such proof.). Uninterested witnesses are also subject to the corroboration requirement. For example, in Barbed Wire Patent, some twenty-four witnesses, all apparently uninterested in the outcome of the case, testified on behalf of the accused infringer that they had seen the patented fence exhibited by a third party, Mr. Morley, at a county fair more than two years prior to the filing of the patent. See Barbed Wire Patent, 143 U.S. at 286-87. That the witnesses themselves were not interested did not immunize their testimony from the corroboration requirement. See Barbed Wire, 143 U.S. at 284 ([w]itnesses whose memories are prodded by the eagerness of interested parties to elicit testimony favorable to themselves are not usually to be depended upon for accurate information.) (emphasis added). It is not surprising that the cases have held that testimony concerning a witness's own anticipatory activities must be corroborated. A witness who testifies to antedating the invention of the patent-in-suit can be expected to derive a sense of professional or personnel accomplishment in being the first in the field, and in this sense is not uninterested in the outcome of the litigation, even if that witness is not claiming entitlement to a patent. Of course, the need for corroboration takes on special force when an otherwise uninterested witness shows some reason to be biased in favor of the interested party: 72 As we have had occasion before to observe, oral testimony, unsupported by patents or exhibits, tending to show prior use of a device regularly patented, is, in the nature of the case, open to grave suspicion. The Barbed Wire Patent, 143 U.S. 275, 12 S.Ct. 443, 36 L.Ed. 154 [ (1891) ]. Granting the witnesses to be of the highest character, and never so conscientious in their desire to tell only the truth, the possibility of their being mistaken as to the exact device used, which, though bearing a general resemblance to the one patented, may differ from it in the very particular which makes it patentable, is such as to render oral testimony peculiarly untrustworthy; particularly so if the testimony be taken after the lapse of years from the time the alleged anticipating device was used. If there be added to this a personal bias, or an incentive to color the testimony in the interest of the party calling the witness, to say nothing of downright perjury, its value is, of course, still more seriously impaired. 73 Deering v. Winona Harvester Works, 155 U.S. 286, 300-01, 15 S.Ct. 118, 39 L.Ed. 153 (1894) (emphasis added). In the final analysis, the Supreme Court has defined the necessity of corroboration not with reference to the level of interest of the testifying witness, but rather because of doubt that testimonial evidence alone in the special context of proving patent invalidity can meet the clear and convincing evidentiary standard to invalidate a patent. 74 Thomson S.A. v. Quixote Corp., 166 F.3d 1172, 49 USPQ2d 1530 (Fed.Cir.1999), petition for cert. filed, 67 U.S.L.W. 3692 (U.S. May 11, 1999) (No. 98-1719), is not to the contrary. The Thomson court did opine on the necessity of corroboration, stating that corroboration is required only when the testifying inventor is asserting a claim of derivation or priority of his or her invention and is a named party, an employee of or assignor to a named party, or otherwise is in a position where he or she stands to directly and substantially gain by his or her invention being found to have priority over the patent claims at issue. Thomson, 166 F.2d at 1176, 49 USPQ2d at 1533. However, Thomson did not involve uncorroborated testimony of a single witness. Indeed, the district court in that case noted that the evidence supporting the anticipation finding came from one or more sources: the live testimony of two people who had worked on [the project that was alleged to anticipate]; an expert's report and portions of his deposition testimony ...; the expert's exhibits; and certain.. documents that the expert had reviewed. See id. at 1174, 166 F.3d 1172, 49 USPQ2d at 1531. Therefore, the facts of Thomson did not present the question of the necessity of corroboration vel non, but rather the sufficiency of the corroborating evidence, a distinct inquiry involving an assessment of the totality of the circumstances, including consideration of the interest of the corroborating witness in the subject matter of the suit. See Woodland Trust, 148 F.3d at 1371, 47 USPQ2d at 1366 (citing In re Reuter, 670 F.2d 1015, 1021 n. 9, 210 USPQ 249, 255 n. 9 (CCPA 1981)) 11 ; see also id. at 1373, 47 USPQ2d at 1368 (The relationship of the witnesses and the fact that the asserted prior uses ended twenty years before the trial, and were abandoned until the defendant reportedly learned of the patentee's practices, underscore the failure of this oral evidence to provide clear and convincing evidence of prior knowledge and use.). Cases like Thomson and Woodland Trust correctly recognized that the level of interest of the testifying witness is an important consideration when such testimony is offered to corroborate another witness's testimony. Those cases, however, do not stand for the proposition that only an interested witness's testimony requires corroboration. In any event, corroboration is required of any witness whose testimony alone is asserted to invalidate a patent, regardless of his or her level of interest. Cf. Price, 988 F.2d at 1194 & 1195 n. 3, 26 USPQ2d at 1036 & 1037 n. 3. 75 Returning to the facts of this case, Jefferts' testimony that he used the claimed invention more than one year prior to the filing of the '884 patent was not corroborated by other evidence. The Jefferts' article simply does not corroborate his testimony because, as we have noted, that article is ambiguous at best concerning the claimed use of nonresonance ejection. Similarly, other testimony taken before the Commission was relevant only to whether Jefferts' experiments were sufficiently public to constitute public use. See Initial Determination at 77-78 (discussing the testimony of Drs. Ensberg and Klemperer). This testimony is therefore not corroborative of Jefferts' use of the claimed invention. 76 The Commission cites certain statements in the case law in support of the proposition that not every aspect of Jefferts' testimony needs to be corroborated. See Knorr v. Pearson, 671 F.2d 1368, 1374, 213 USPQ2d 196, 201 (CCPA 1982) (The law does not impose an impossible standard of 'independence' on corroborative evidence by requiring that every point [necessary to prove invalidity] be corroborated by evidence having a source totally independent of the inventor; indeed such a standard is the antithesis of the rule of reason.); Kridl v. McCormick, 105 F.3d 1446, 1451, 41 USPQ2d 1686, 1688 (Fed.Cir.1997) (An evaluation of all pertinent evidence must be made so that a sound determination of the credibility of the inventor's story may be reached.). These statements, however, are inapt here because they pertained to situations in which the question to be resolved was whether, under the totality of the circumstances, certain evidence was sufficiently corroborative of otherwise uncorroborated testimony of invalidating activities. See Knorr, 671 F.2d at 1374, 213 USPQ at 201 ([W]e hold that [Pearson's reduction to practice] was adequately corroborated by independent evidence.); Kridl, 105 F.3d at 1450, 41 USPQ2d at 1689 (assessing whether Swain's testimony was sufficiently corroborative of McCormick's claim of priority). In this case, the sole basis to support a determination of a prior public use was Jefferts' testimony concerning his own work; there was no evidence corroborative of this testimony at all. This appeal therefore presents a different question from the sufficiency question presented in Knorr and Kridl. See note 11, supra, and accompanying text. 77 In the end, what we are left with is Jefferts' testimony concerning his alleged public use. Such evidence is insufficient as a matter of law to establish invalidity of the patent. This is not a judgment that Jefferts testimony is incredible, but simply that such testimony alone cannot surmount the hurdle that the clear and convincing evidence standard imposes in proving patent invalidity. See Mahurkar v. C.R. Bard, Inc., 79 F.3d 1572, 1577, 38 USPQ2d 1288, 1291 (Fed.Cir.1996) (noting that the corroboration rule, provides a bright line for both district courts and the PTO to follow....).