Opinion ID: 2799778
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: commission determination

Text: The Commission reviewed the ALJ’s determination, revised one of the ALJ’s claim constructions, and determined that one of the accused devices does not meet the claims of the ‘605 Patent. Comm’n Op. at 2. The Com- mission affirmed the remainder of the ALJ’s determinations as to claim construction, infringement, and validity. Id. at 2. The Commission, however, reversed the ALJ’s domestic industry determination, finding that “Standard Innovation has satisfied the domestic industry requirement based on its expenditures on components produced domestically that are critical to [its devices].” Id. at 26. The Commission rejected the ALJ’s economic prong analysis because Standard Innovation “established that the components were critical for [its devices], which the ALJ found to be protected by the patent. This is sufficient for us to consider the component expenses in our economic prong analysis.” Id. at 27–28. The Commission deter- 3 The ALJ made numerous other quantitative find- ings that paint a more complete picture of Standard Innovation’s domestic investments, e.g., per-unit costs of the microcontroller and other components, per-unit costs of the domestically-sourced components compared to perdevice revenue, total sales of the devices, and Standard Innovation’s aggregate domestic investments. Initial Determination at 76. These findings have, however, been marked confidential. This Court has repeatedly explained that over-marking information as confidential places significant limits on this Court’s ability to address the relevant issue in a public opinion. We note that these findings show, at most, modest investments. 6 LELO INC. v. ITC mined, however, that Standard Innovation’s sales and marketing data were not relevant to the establishment of a domestic industry under prong (C). Id. at 29–30, n. 8. The Commission rejected the ALJ’s finding that the purchases were neither “substantial” nor “significant” under prongs (A) or (C). Conceding that the purchases represented “a relatively modest proportion of domestic content,” id. at 34, the Commission determined that the “contribution of the components at issue from a qualitative standpoint is indeed significant,” id. at 35. The Commission found that the ALJ had failed to give “due consideration to the critical nature of the components to the patented products in the context of the industry and the company.” Id. at 34. The Commission reasoned that the components were “crucial” because the backbone and finishing materials were finalized after extensive effort and experimentation, the backbone material specifically allowed for beneficial flexibility and resilience, the microcontrollers enabled the devices to “function as a vibrator (particularly as a vibrator with multiple modes)” by controlling “motor and mode selection.” Id. at 35–36. The Commission thus determined that the domestic purchases were significant entirely based on their qualitative contribution to the devices. LELO timely appealed. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(6).