Court Opinion

ID: 9498001
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:05:26.05265+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:33.013142
License: Public Domain

PROST, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the majority’s well-reasoned analyses with respect to almost all of issues raised in this case, as well as the majority’s decision to remand this case to the district court for reconsideration of whether the ’493 patent is invalid for obviousness. I write separately only to point out my disagreement with one particular portion of the majority’s opinion.
I respectfully disagree with the opinion’s focus on the proceedings at the Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) when analyzing whether the district court correctly found that the claimed ophthalmic formulation produced unexpected results. The majority analyzes the prosecution history of the ’493 patent, pointing out an “inconsistency between the views of two examiners” in the parent and continuation applications and a statement during prosecution that the majority believes “contradicted the express finding of the initial PTO examiner.” Ante, at 1382. In light of these aspects of the prosecution history, the majority concludes that “this case is unusual because key facts existed that give rise to some doubt as to the strength of the factual proposition that octoxynol 40 indeed produced unexpected results” and instructs the district court to “review the file history as part of its assessment of whether the invention claimed by the claims in suit are nonobvious.” Ante, at 1383. Thus, the majority requires that the district court analyze the views of separate examiners at the PTO and review statements made by the patent prosecutor for possible mischar-acterizations of the prosecution history.
I view this investigation into the prosecution history as problematic in several respects. First, this investigation shifts the focus from the appropriate question for the district court to address on remand: whether the evidence shows the ’493 patent claims an ophthalmic formulation that produced unexpected results. Next, as the majority concedes, ante, at 1382-83, Apotex never asserted that Syntex’s arguments to the second examiner concerning the prosecution history are suspect. Moreover, had Apotex asserted that these arguments were suspect, I believe the assertion would be relevant to the issue of inequitable conduct and not obviousness. In this regard, I don’t view the statement referred to by the majority as a clear mischaraeterization of the prosecution history. And the patent prosecutor likely believed the previous data submitted to the first examiner did show unexpected results even if the first examiner believed the data did not. I also find it hard to believe that the second examiner was somehow duped into thinking that the first *1386examiner agreed that the previous data showed unexpected results even if the statement could be understood to be misleading.
In general, I fail to see how the conduct of a patent applicant is relevant to an obviousness determination. Alleged misconduct at the PTO, in terms of either mischaracterizations or omissions, goes to the heart of an inequitable conduct inquiry but is simply irrelevant to an obviousness inquiry. That is not to say that if evidence showing that a claimed invention does not produce unexpected results was not disclosed to the PTO then that evidence should not be considered by the district court in its obviousness analysis. On the contrary, a district court should consider evidence relevant to an obviousness analysis even if that evidence is not disclosed to the PTO.
In sum, I believe that, here, the district court should address the evidence in the record to determine whether the claimed ophthalmic formulation showed unexpected results. For example, the district court should review all of Lidgate’s test results, including test results not disclosed to the PTO such as the comparison of octoxynol 12.5 with octoxynol 40, as well as Dr. Mi-tra’s reasons to discredit some of those test results. In my view, however, there is nothing so unusual about this case as to compel the district court on remand to review alleged misconduct by the patent applicant at the PTO.