Opinion ID: 3179009
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Heading Rank: 1

Heading: 81 grams per cubic centimeter, which is the den-

Text: sity of fully carbonized fibers, when there should have been a gradually increasing density from 18 ZOLTEK CORP. v. US 1.36 through the temperature range shown on [your spreadsheet], correct? [Objection for lack of foundation; overruled] A. It is true that the carbon fiber density will change with heat treatment temperature and that it probably is true that a different value, other than a uniform 1.81, would have been more ap- propriate Q. Okay. A. I will concede that. Trial Tr. 257:2–19. Zoltek also points to Dr. Sullivan’s admission that his critical fiber volume fraction, 0.3%/30%, fundamental to his calculations based on the Rule of Mixtures, was wrong and that Dr. Sullivan used data from a 2000 Zoltek User’s Guide directed to fully carbonized composites at a temperature of 1400°C, a reference published fourteen years after the ’162 patent’s filing date. Dr. Sullivan conceded that there were errors in his calculations, stating that the reason was that he did not have complete information. That is not surprising, for there was not complete information in the prior art— weighing against the government’s argument that it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill to recreate the Boyd graph from known information. Dr. Sullivan’s plaint that he could not accurately duplicate Boyd’s discovery because of lack of information is powerful evidence of non-obviousness—not the contrary. Dr. Sullivan stated that he obtained some of the values he used in his calculations from the ’162 patent itself. However, for the volume fraction of carbon fiber, described by Dr. Sullivan as by far the most important element in the equation, he ignored the figure in the patent (0.83) and used a value of 0.3, which he testified ZOLTEK CORP. v. US 19 came from a Zoltek 2000 User’s Guide. Zoltek points out that this Guide was directed to an entirely different product, and also that the Guide was written fourteen years after the ’162 patent application was filed. There was no showing that the information on which Dr. Sullivan relied was available to persons of skill at the time of the Boyd invention. Zoltek states, and Dr. Sullivan did not contradict, that Dr. Sullivan selected values from various sources in order to fit the template of Boyd’s results. Neither the government’s attorney argument, nor Dr. Sullivan’s testimony, nor the opinion of the Court of Federal Claims, points to any suggestion in the prior art to select the data selected by Dr. Sullivan and create the mathematical formula to construct a graph to track Figure 4. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418–19 (2007) (“Although common sense directs one to look with care at a patent application that claims as innovation the combination of two known devices according to their established functions, it can be important to identify a reason that would have prompted a person of ordinary skill in the relevant field to combine the elements in the way the claimed new invention does. This is so because inventions in most, if not all, instances rely upon building blocks long since uncovered, and claimed discoveries almost of necessity will be combinations of what, in some sense, is already known.”). Even Dr. Sullivan called his reconstruction of Figure 4 “somewhat arbitrary.” Trial Tr. 259:18. Hindsight reconstruction for litigation ends is not of probative value. See Outside the Box Innovations, LLC v. Travel Caddy, Inc., 695 F.3d 1285, 1298 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (“Precedent recognizes the pitfalls of judicial hindsight exercised at the time of litigation . . . .”). The Court has recognized “the distortion caused by hindsight bias” and “arguments reliant upon ex post 20 ZOLTEK CORP. v. US reasoning” in determining obviousness. KSR, 550 U.S. at 421; see InTouch Technologies, Inc. v. VGO Commc’ns, Inc., 751 F.3d 1327, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (“It appears that [the expert] relied on the . . . patent itself as her roadmap for putting what she referred to as pieces of a ‘jigsaw puzzle’ together.”); W.L. Gore & Associates, Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1553 (Fed. Cir. 1983) (“To imbue one of ordinary skill in the art with knowledge of the invention in suit, when no prior art reference or references of record convey or suggest that knowledge, is to fall victim to the insidious effect of a hindsight syndrome wherein that which only the inventor taught is used against its teacher.”). The government does not attempt to rehabilitate Dr. Sullivan’s errors. Instead, the government’s argument appears to be that since Dr. Sullivan is a renowned scientist in this field, and since Dr. Sullivan was able to reproduce the Figure 4 graph, it was obvious to do so. This was error, since, as we have repeatedly cautioned, “[t]hat which may be made clear and thus ‘obvious’ to a court, with the invention fully diagrammed and aided . . . by experts in the field, may have been a break-through of substantial dimension when first unveiled.” Uniroyal, Inc. v. Rudkin-Wiley Corp., 837 F.2d 1044, 1051 (Fed. Cir. 1988) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also KSR, 550 U.S. at 421 (“A factfinder should be aware, of course, of the distortion caused by hindsight bias and must be cautious of arguments reliant upon ex post reasoning”) (citing Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 36 (1966) as “warning against a temptation to read into the prior art the teachings of the invention in issue and instructing courts to guard against slipping into use of hindsight”) (internal quotation marks omitted); W.L. Gore, 721 F.2d at 1553 (“It is difficult but necessary that the decisionmaker forget what he or she has been taught at trial about the claimed invention and cast the mind back to the time the invention was made (often as here many years), ZOLTEK CORP. v. US 21 to occupy the mind of one skilled in the art who is presented only with the references, and who is normally guided by the then-accepted wisdom in the art.”). There was not clear and convincing evidence of obviousness of the Boyd discovery and its use to produce carbon fiber sheets of pre-selected homogeneous electrical resistance. The CFC’s ruling of invalidity on the ground of obviousness is reversed.