Court Opinion

ID: 9497213
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:45:58.850907+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:58:03.869578
License: Public Domain

LOURIE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the result reached by the majority and in its opinion, except for the analysis in Section III.C relating to the burden of proof and its purported basis for distinguishing the Environ case. The majority imposes a “clear and convincing” test for Lilly to show joint inventorship, asserting that a joint inventorship question is different from the priority dispute dealt with in Environ. I disagree; there is of course a difference, but one that should not affect the burden of proof.
First, it is important to note, as the majority does, that a preponderance of the evidence burden of proof applies when the contesting patents are, or were, copending in the Patent and Trademark Office. That is the holding of Environ. The two parties here had copending applications at one time, and thus the Environ burden should apply absent a meaningful distinction. The majority decides that Environ is distinguishable because it deals with priority whereas this case involves joint invention. However, in my view, that is not a meaningful distinction.
While joint inventorship is indeed a different issue from priority, I fail to see how the issues require a different standard. In each case, one party is trying to establish that his activities with respect to the invention claimed in another party’s patent occurred at a time and/or in a relationship with that other party either to antedate the other party’s effective date of invention or to establish a joint invent or relationship. An identical invention (or at least lack of separate patentability) and either a timeliness or jointness fact need to be shown. Thus, a preponderance of the evidence burden of proof should apply to both. Because of the copendency of the applications, the concern that a second applicant may simply have copied an invention already patented by another does not arise. But we do not need to decide that issue.
The majority holds, and I agree, that Lilly failed to provide substantial evidence to the jury that Dr. DiMarchi conveyed to Aradigm scientists that lispro should be administered by aerosol to achieve a doubling of bioavailability. That being the case, we need not decide that a joint inven-torship situation requires a different, and more severe, burden of proof than a priority situation. Lilly loses simply because it *1371cannot show communication of the same invention as Aradigm claimed. For that reason, I would not make what I believe is a false distinction between Hess and Environ in order to decide an issue that is readily resolvable on a ground already dealt with by the panel. That decision is not necessary to the resolution of this case.