Court Opinion

ID: 9471588
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:36:06.684443+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:28.687901
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join in this able opinion in all its parts, and in the judgment. My only reason for writing separately is to comment on the defense that the infringement was not willful, and therefore damages should not be doubled nor should counsel fees be awarded. The appellant’s theory is that it relied in good faith on advice of its own counsel. That theory evidently imposes a heavy responsibility upon counsel, who by suitable magic words can reduce an infringer’s liability to what may well not exceed the price of a license or what the price would have been had a license been purchaseable.
In this case, an outside firm advised that infringement could be avoided if certain precautions were taken to avoid “as far as practicable” producing a meat fritter, like plaintiff’s, by squeezing and horizontal expansion, as plaintiff did it. How far was “practicable” was left uncertain, but the opinion states—
It is advisable that Hormel stay as far from “approximately” 100% expansion as practicable, while still producing an acceptable product. As I think you understand, the further away from 100% it can stay, the less likely it is to infringe the Luker patent.
Since a product undergoing considerably less than 100% expansion is quite arguably outside the scope of the claim, I believe Hormel can safely manufacture such a product. [Emphasis supplied.]
Thus the writer seems to say that if his directions are followed, he will be able to make a pretty good argument that the patent is not infringed. It does not appear that Hormel made much of an effort, if any, before litigation started, to follow these directions, but that is not my point. My point is that this letter is far short of an unequivocal statement that if Hormel follows the writer’s guidelines, infringement will not result. Only, “quite arguably,” this will be the case.
The letter closes with the cynical advice, which has caused so much amusement among readers for whom it was obviously not written, that if Hormel chose to go ahead and produce the questioned product, “as an added safety precaution,” it should do so in the jurisdiction of the Eighth Cir- ' cuit Court of Appeals. The writer says: “the Eighth Circuit has not held a patent either valid or infringed within recent history.” He goes on to explain in detail where Hormel could operate and be within the Eighth Circuit’s domain. Hormel did not take this advice either: it operated, alas for it, in the Tenth Circuit.
Conclusion as to validity is challenged on a ground I do not discuss, i.e., that the source of validity doubt was prior art known to and considered by the patent office before it granted the patent. My problem lies elsewhere.
. Reading the letter as a whole, it is clear the writer has not full confidence that the patent is invalid, or that the precautions recommended by him will suffice to avoid infringement. The best he can say is that “quite arguably” this will be the outcome of possible litigation. So, in effect, we are asked to say Hormel acted in good faith, not because its counsel assured it it would be doing right, but because he thought he could make a plausible argument. And the feeble force of this, as probative of client good faith, further suffers as we see the cynical suggestion that the operation should be so located that it would be tested in the Eighth Circuit. I do not, of course, have before me any basis for an opinion whether the writer’s assessment of an infringer’s chances in that circuit was, when written, valid or not. It was his opinion, not the putative future holdings of the Eighth Circuit, that were supposed to guide the client.
I, for one, would never vote to remit damages for willful infringement, or counsel fees, on the basis of equivocal pro*1582nouncements that nowhere draw a clear line for the client, as to what would be right and what would be wrong, under the law. .Here the lawyer has tried to give the client a realistic, if cynical, assessment, but not a clear legal opinion. If the client chose to act on it, the decision was his and presumably he shared the attorney’s assessment of the chances. His are the consequences. None of this ritual has anything to do with good faith or the lack of it and, therefore, the involved letter has no probative value to demonstrate clear error in the trial court’s findings and conclusions as to willfulness of the infringement.