Court Opinion

ID: 9471056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:24:26.75906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:15.423343
License: Public Domain

TATE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. By virtue of the implicit factual findings made by the properly-instructed jury in determining the issue of obviousness adversely to the defendants, Control Components, Inc. v. Valtek, Inc., 609 F.2d 763, 767-68 (5th Cir.), cert, denied, 449 U.S. 1022, 101 S.Ct. 589, 66 L.Ed.2d 484 (1980) — findings supported by substantial evidence sufficient to withstand a motion for judgment notwithstanding the jury verdict, Boeing v. Shipman, 411 F.2d 365, 374-75 (5th Cir.1969) (en banc) — , the district court erred in overturning the special verdict of the jury of nonobviousness.
While the issue of obviousness is a question of law, the district judge found as a subsidiary fact — in the face of conflicting evidence on the issue, and despite an instruction under which the jury was required to determine the issue before accepting or rejecting the defense of obviousness — that the most pertinent prior art (examination of which was required by patent examiners prior to issuance of a valid patent) was that of “the field of fasteners and holders” — not the field of “bedding fasteners” (the field upon which the patent examiners relied in issuing the patent). As we noted in Control Components, supra, the underlying factual inquiry in determining the law issue of obviousness includes “[preliminary factual determinations ... on the scope and content of the prior art and on the difference between the prior art and the claims at issue.” 669 F.2d at 767 (emphasis added). It is only “then” that the trial judge “determines whether the improvement would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art.” Id. (emphasis supplied). See also Graham v. John Deere Company of Kansas City, 383 U.S. 1,17-18, 86 S.Ct. 684, 693-94, 15 L.Ed.2d 545 (1966). The district court could not disturb the jury finding of obviousness without rejecting the subsidiary pertinent prior art factual determination upon which the jury verdict of obviousness was founded.
The error of the majority in affirming the grant of judgment notwithstanding the verdict is both obvious and patent. The district court made a factual finding as to the most pertinent prior art contrary to that made by the jury, which had been properly instructed (without objection from either party) as to the criteria as to this issue and which had been instructed to de*886termine this factual issue in deciding (by response to the special interrogatory) whether or not the patented device was obvious. R.IX, pp. 679, 692. The issue had been hotly contested before the trial judge. Substantial evidence in the Boeing v. Ship-man sense supports this factual component of the jury verdict.
The plaintiff May himself testified that the field of the most pertinent prior art was in the field of bedding fasteners. His testimony was opposed by that of the defendant Lucas and two experts who testified on behalf of the defendants. I am unable to say that the plaintiff’s own testimony, together with the jury’s credibility option to reject the testimony of the defendant and his experts in the light of their financial self-interest in so testifying, as well as of the substantial testimony of peculiar problems in the water-bed fastener field (and of the long unsuccessful efforts, both by the defendant and others in the field to solve them, until the plaintiff’s successful patented device), did not constitute substantial evidence1 — “evidence of such quality and weight that reasonable and fair-minded men in the exercise of impartial judgment” might conclude is sufficient to support a factual finding, Boeing v. Shipman, supra, 411 F.2d at 374 — as not only to justify submission of this factual issue to the jury, but also to enable a jury verdict so founded to surmount a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, id.
I therefore respectfully dissent.

. The focus of the inquiry to determine the most pertinent prior art is on the art in which the “problem solvers” were engaged, rather than the “users” of the solution. I.U. Technology Corporation v. Research-Cottrell, Inc., 641 F.2d 298, 303 (5th Cir.1981). Moreover, analogous arts are to be included within the meaning of “prior art.” I.U. Technology Corporation, supra, 641 F.2d at 304. The inquiry, however, is clearly factual. Graham and Control Components, supra.
It is difficult for me to see how trial or appellate judges — “users” at most (if that) of water beds — may determine as a matter of law the most pertinent prior art, when the actual problem solvers testified in this case to opposing effect as to this factual issue.