Court Opinion

ID: 9490869
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:57:11.690217+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:21.951908
License: Public Domain

MAYER, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I write separately to emphasize the incompleteness of this court’s Markman * dissertation on the use of extrinsic evidence in construing patent claims. Federal Rule of Evidence 702 says that expert testimony and evidence is admissible not only to educate but also to find facts. “If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise.” (Emphasis added). If there is no disagreement about the meaning of a term in a patent, even a complex one, expert testimony can come in to educate, akin to a motion for summary judgment as a matter of law on undisputed material facts. But when, as here, there is vigorous dispute and conflicting evidence about the meaning of a term, the trial judge has to make findings of fact as he decides the meaning to ascribe to the patent.
If this were truly an exercise in construing words and concepts as a matter of law, absent any factual components, Fromson might well prevail; at least he would have my vote. *1448I “know” what anodization means from my own undergraduate studies and experiments; the concept is not difficult and I - need no further education to grasp it. I happen to have a dictionary in my chambers from the era pertinent here, which would confirm my “knowledge” about anodization. Fromson appeared to use the term without limit and, not surprisingly, so proclaims; even Anitec personnel called its process by the same name. But, I am neither an expert in the field nor one of ordinary skill in the art despite how much I think I “know” about a process I once studied. Nor do my colleagues on this court or on the district court possess such expertise, and even if they did, they would have to defer to the record made in the case. The trial judge performed his Daubert ** duty and allowed expert testimony and other evidence, not only so that he might become better educated about the meaning of anodization, but also so that he might develop the record and find the meaning of anodization, as used in this patent, to one skilled in the art in 1973. That he has done. We are affirming his claim construction as a matter of law based on the facts he found from conflicting evidence, which are not clearly erroneous.
The trial court has comprehensively laid out and our opinion reviews the evidence, and it defies reason to suggest that the evidence was merely taken for its educational value. This construction is correct as a matter of law on this record, but only because of the factual predicate. This case could readily and probably would have come out differently if we were free, as some of our cases suggest, to decide the issue anew as a matter purely of law. The court’s opinion, which I fully join, demonstrates that the surest way to maintain consistency and certainty in patent cases is for us to rely on the trial court’s fact finding expertise and the record it makés and considers. We do a disservice if we go off on a definitional inquest of our own.

 Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 52 F.3d 967, 34 USPQ2d 1321 (Fed.Cir.1995)(tn banc).

 Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993); see also General Elec. Co. v. Joiner, - U.S.-, 118 S.Ct. 512, 139 L.Ed.2d 508 (1997).