Court Opinion

ID: 9493395
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:06:46.82222+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:48.944678
License: Public Domain

PLAGER, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join the opinion and concur in the conclusion that this case must be returned for trial, but I do so without enthusiasm. If the trial judge sat as the trier of fact, I would find his assessment of the facts unimpeachable. But he does not. Instead, under the rules as we now have them, and because the patentee’s lawyer did a good job of building a record of arguably disputable facts, the matter (unless settled) will now go to a jury before whom there will be a lengthy and costly contest of the experts. The jury will then pick a winner; it may be the judge’s winner, or it may not. In either event, the case provides a textbook example of the insubstantial nature of the “insubstantial differences” test, and its marginally legitimate child, “substantially the same way to achieve substantially the same result,” on which the outcome will turn. May the best lawyer win.