Court Opinion

ID: 9497947
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:04:19.075953+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:31.312562
License: Public Domain

LOURIE, Circuit Judge,
with whom MICHEL, Chief Judge, and PAULINE NEWMAN, Circuit Judge, join, dissenting from order denying rehearing en banc.
I respectfully dissent from the court’s declining to hear this case en banc. In my opinion, the panel erroneously concludes that commercial success is not probative because “others were legally barred” from commercially testing certain ideas in the prior art. Moreover, I believe the panel erred in linking commercial success to the failure of others.
Commercial success is a fact question, and, once it is established, as found here by the trial court, the only other question is whether the success is attributable to the claimed invention (“nexus”), rather than to other factors such as market power, advertising, demand for all products of a given type, a rising economy that “lifts all boats,” etc. It is not negatived by any inability of others to test various formulations because of the existence of another patent. Success is success. The panel’s rule is especially unsound in the context of an improvement patent, as here, because it holds in effect that commercial success for an improvement is irrelevant when a prior patent dominates the basic invention.
Commercial success is also independent of any “failure of others,” as that is another, separate secondary consideration.
Respectfully, the full court should have reheard the appeal to eliminate the confusion in the law that the panel opinion creates.