Court Opinion

ID: 9496498
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 16:28:09.633172+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:57:36.898117
License: Public Domain

PAULINE NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part.
I agree that Chen is not entitled to the filing date of either the '423 or the '261 application, for these specifications do not name or picture or describe the cyclopro-pataxol compound of the counts, or recognize that this compound is inherently present. Accepting that the compound is in fact formed by the procedure there used, the content of these applications does not establish priority to the counts directed to the cyclopropataxol compounds.
However, the deficiencies of the first two applications are irrelevant to the '819 application, wherein the correctly identified cyclopropataxol compound was made, described, pictured, and claimed. That application is a constructive reduction to practice of the counts. Its filing date, however, is after the effective date of the party Bouchard, requiring Chen to prove conception and either actual reduction to practice or diligence to his filing date. I do not agree that those proofs were not met by a preponderance of evidence.
Chen’s conception of the cyclopropataxol of the counts, and the extensive documentary and testimonial evidence of its synthesis, identification, analysis, and biological activity, were presented and documented in a straightforward manner, in accordance with standard laboratory practices and scientific protocols. The Board abused its discretion in refusing to admit the research notebooks of Chen’s assistant Jian-mei Wei. The Board excluded the notebooks on the basis that they were hearsay and not within the business records exception to the hearsay rule. The Board held, *1313citing Fed.R.Evid. 803(6), that Chen was required to prove that the notebooks were
made at or near the time by, or from information transmitted by, a person with knowledge, if kept in the course of regularly conducted business activity, and if it was the regular practice of that business activity to make the memorandum, report, record or data compilation, all as shown by the testimony of the custodian or other qualified witness, unless the source of information or the method or circumstances of preparation indicate lack of trustworthiness.
Board Op. at 52 (emphasis by the Board). There can be no dispute that Chen satisfies the criteria of a “qualified witness,” under Rule 803(6), or that it was the regular practice to keep research notebooks. See Air Land Forwarders, Inc. v. United States, 172 F.3d 1338, 1344 (Fed.Cir.1999) (where additional guarantees of reliability were present, the business records “were properly admitted by the trial court even though the government did not produce a witness that could testify with first-hand knowledge as to the procedures used in the original preparation of each of the repair estimates”); Conoco v. Department of Energy, 99 F.3d 387, 391 (Fed.Cir.1996) (“Courts have made clear, however, that the ‘custodian or other qualified witness’ who must authenticate business records need not be the person who prepared or maintained the records, or even an employee of the record-keeping entity, as long as the witness understands the system used to prepare the records.”). Chen testified that the notebooks were those of Ms. Wei, that he supervised her work and reviewed the notebooks, and that the information sought to be admitted was timely recorded. The Board erred in refusing to consider Chen’s testimony on the ground that it was not corroborated. Not every aspect of an inventor’s testimony requires corroboration.
As authority, the Board cited Holmwood v. Sugavanam, 948 F.2d 1236 (Fed.Cir.1991). But Holmwood does not stand for the proposition that an inventor’s testimony as to the authenticity of a business document must be corroborated. I can find no case that holds an inventor’s testimony must be corroborated as to such routine matters as the maintenance of business records, nor does the panel majority cite to one. See id. at 1239 (“only an inventor’s testimony needs corroboration”); Conoco, 99 F.3d at 391 (“Because of the general trustworthiness of regularly kept records and the need for such evidence in many cases, the business records exception has been construed generously in favor of admissibility.”) The panel majority ignores this precedent, requiring that the operator of the research laboratory provide evidence of its policies concerning research notebooks. Indeed, one can always dream up testimony that might have been provided, had the PTO required it. The issue, however, is the sufficiency of what was actually provided.
The requirement that inventor testimony be corroborated arose from recognition of a combination of human frailty and faltering memory, exacerbated by the high stakes of the priority contest. These concerns apply to the acts that are presented to prove conception and reduction to practice. They do not apply to such routine matters as whether notebooks are kept, and to require corroboration of everything to which an inventor testifies, simply because he is an inventor, amounts to the establishment of a rebuttable presumption of dishonesty. See Kridl v. McCormick, 105 F.3d 1446, 1451 (Fed.Cir.1997) (“While there must generally be corroboration of an inventor’s testimony of conception of his or her invention, the utility of the invention need not always be explicitly corroborated.”). See also Ethicon, Inc. v. United States Surgical Corp., 135 F.3d 1456, 1464 *1314(Fed.Cir.1998) (“Accordingly, there need not be corroboration for every factual issue contested by the parties.”). We should not ratify the Board’s erroneous application of the rules of evidence and of precedent.
Bouchard’s motion to suppress the Wei notebooks was filed in August, 2000, almost four years after the deadline of November 13, 1996 that the APJ had set for filing such motions. Chen points out that permitting this tardy objection, after the record had closed, prevented him from presenting additional evidence of the notebooks’ authenticity. In failing to apply its own rules, the Board committed seriously prejudicial error.
There was no evidence whatsoever that the notebooks were not those of Ms. Wei, or that they were inaccurate or falsified or in any way unreliable. The Board has simply imposed a new evidentiary rule upon inventors and done it in a way that is manifestly unfair. Ms. Wei’s notebooks were business records, and were qualified for admission into evidence; it is not necessary that the “custodian” of business records testify when the records are credibly and reasonably authenticated. Further, a motion to suppress such evidence as unauthenticated must be timely made, not withheld until after the evidentiary record has closed and it is too late to remedy any technical flaw.
The persons who performed the many analyses reasonably, and correctly, confirmed the proposed structure. The Board departed from its own rules of interference evidence in requiring corroboration of the testimony of the non-inventor analytical scientists. Further, confirmation of the structure of this complex molecule by the analysts need not exclude knowledge of the inventor’s proposed structure, and I agree with the panel majority that the Board’s requirements exceeded accepted and reasonable scientific procedure.
When the evidence presented to the Board is properly admitted and considered, Chen easily established conception and actual reduction to practice before the effective filing date of the party Bouchard. From the court’s contrary holding, I respectfully dissent.