Court Opinion

ID: 9489901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:27:20.892174+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:47.302305
License: Public Domain

MAYER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because proper deference to the district court’s findings of fact about the on sale bar compels the conclusion that Micro Chemical, Inc.’s patent is invalid, I dissent.
An inventor loses his right to a patent if he placed his invention “in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States.” 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) (1994). To invalidate a patent under this section, the party asserting the on sale bar must demonstrate by clear and convincing evidence “that there was a definite sale or offer to sell more than one year before the application for the subject patent, and that the subject matter of the sale or offer to sell fully anticipated the claimed invention or would have rendered the claimed invention obvious by its addition to the prior art.” UMC Elec. Co. v. United States, 816 F.2d 647, 656, 2 USPQ2d 1465, 1472 (Fed.Cir.1987). Once a party asserting the bar proves the existence of an offer and either identity between the offered and patented apparatus or obviousness of the claimed invention in light of the offered apparatus and its teachings, the patent owner can preserve the validity of his patent by “eom[ing] forward with evidence to counter that showing.” U.S. Envtl. Prods., Inc. v. Westall, 911 F.2d 713, 716, 15 USPQ2d 1898, 1901 (Fed.Cir.1990).
The determination that a product was placed on sale under section 102(b) is a question of law, based on underlying facts. KeyStone Retaining Wall Sys. Inc. v. Westrock, Inc., 997 F.2d 1444, 1451, 27 USPQ2d 1297, 1303 (Fed.Cir.1993). While we review the district court’s ultimate determination of a section 102(b) bar de novo, we review subsidiary facts supporting this conclusion for clear error. Ferag AG v. Quipp, Inc., 45 F.3d 1562, 1566, 33 USPQ2d 1512, 1515 (Fed.Cir. 1995); U.S. Envtl. Prods., 911 F.2d at 715, 15 USPQ2d at 1900.
In reviewing a district court’s legal and factual determinations attending section 102(b), this court should resist blurring the distinction between its two separate inquiries, namely the existence of an offer for sale more than one year prior to the critical date, and the sale of subject matter that would fully anticipate or render obvious the claimed invention by its addition to the prior art. A definite and firm belief that the subject matter of a sale would not anticipate or render obvious the claimed invention does not transform a firm offer into a nebulous or indefinite one.
The district court made a well supported finding that William Pratt made a definite offer to Lee Isaac in 1984, based in part on the following facts:
Mr. Lee Isaac, co-owner of the Sunbelt Feedlot, confirmed that he had several meetings with Mr. Pratt ... between October, 1984, and the beginning of January, 1985, during which Mr. Pratt offered to place a weigh machine at the Sunbelt Feedlot. Isaac testified that Mr. Pratt had told him “that it [MCI weigh machine] was *1552more accurate than the volume machine.” Mr. Isaac also testified that it was his understanding that the machine was ... ready to be placed at the feedlot as soon as he would place an order.
Mr. Pratt testified that he reviewed these [no longer existing sales] files and created these notes [entitled “Need Patent Filing Date,” one of which states “12/26/84 — ■ MWS machine offered in person for 6D e 6L — no date promised. MWS not final version.”] after his attorney had explained the need to inform the Patent Office when the first public use or offer for sale of his patented invention occurred.
The Court is unable to reconcile the plain meaning of the words Mr. Pratt wrote and his purported explanation of what those words signify, particularly when the plain meaning of the words is confirmed by the sworn deposition testimony of a third party witness with no interest in this litigation.
In determining the credibility of Mr. Pratt’s explanation of the meaning of the entries on this document, the Court notes that, although this document contains purely factual recitations created by Mr. Pratt for his own use before his patent application was filed, and was never sent to Mr. Pratt’s attorney, the document was withheld during discovery on the basis of the attorney work product doctrine, and was misdescribed on plaintiffs privileged document list.
As the district court stated, the lack of discussion about price or payment terms during Pratt’s offer to Isaac, although traditionally an indication that no offer was made, is here uninformative because standard practice in the industry was to give these machines to feedlots at no cost to encourage the purchase of microingredient additives — the primary business of both parties. The fact that Pratt did not describe his apparatus to Isaac beyond saying that it was a weigh machine more accurate than his volume machines, and the fact that Isaac did not understand how the invention worked, are similarly uninformative. In this ease, a proper section 102(b) analysis does not focus on the purchaser’s knowledge of details about the apparatus or how it works. See, e.g., RCA Corp. v. Data Gen. Corp., 887 F.2d 1056, 1060, 12 USPQ2d 1449, 1452 (Fed.Cir. 1989) (an offer or sale may invoke the statutory bar “even though no details are disclosed”); King Instrument Corp. v. Otari Corp., 767 F.2d 853, 860, 226 USPQ 402, 407 (Fed.Cir.1985) (“When an executory sales contract is entered into (or offered) before the critical date, the purchaser must know how the invention embodied in the offer will perform____ The policies underlying the on sale bar, however, concentrate on the attempt by the inventor to exploit his invention, not whether the potential purchaser was cognizant of the invention. Accordingly, the purchaser need not have actual knowledge of the invention for it to be on sale”). Where the purchaser understands generally how an apparatus would perform, detailed knowledge is even less determinative. As this court stated in Ferag, 45 F.3d at 1568, 33 USPQ2d at 1516, ‘We emphasize that this is an objective test, and that at its heart lies the inventor’s attempt to commercialize the invention____ [T]he measure of the bar is what was offered, not the patentee’s intent.”
The focus of the dispute below, and the only remaining proper question for our review of the district court’s section 102(b) analysis, should be whether the apparatus offered to Isaac in December 1984 embodied or made obvious the patented invention. Our review of the findings of fact and conclusions of law on this question is driven by policy considerations that underlie this section. See King Instrument, 767 F.2d at 860, 226 USPQ at 407. Foremost among these is to prevent inventors from exploiting the commercial value of their inventions beyond the statutory authorization. See Envirotech Corp. v. Westech Eng’g Inc., 904 F.2d 1571, 1574, 15 USPQ2d 1230, 1232 (Fed.Cir.1990). To accomplish this, inventors are held to the strict requirement that they file their patent applications no more than one year after an attempt to commercialize the invention. Thus, we have held that an inventor does not avoid the on sale bar by continuing to add improvements to his invention after its commercialization. See, e.g., Seal-Flex, Inc. v. Athletic Track and Court Constr., 98 F.3d 1318, 1324, 40 USPQ2d 1450, 1454-55 (Fed. Cir.1996).
*1553Many factors may influence the determination of an on sale bar within this policy framework. However, because no single factor is controlling, the ultimate determination depends on the totality of the circumstances, that is to say, all of the facts surrounding the transactions, no two of which are alike. Envirotech, 904 F.2d at 1574, 15 USPQ2d at 1232. These individual circumstances require factual determinations about the level of skill and state of the art, the nature of the invention, the stage of its development when offered — including which elements of the later claimed patent were being offered and which would be implicitly suggested by the addition of offered elements to the prior art — and evidence of the inventor’s intentions during the alleged commercialization. Although we may reverse a trial court’s ultimate conclusion that the totality of evidence supports a result, we cannot reverse its factual findings themselves, absent a definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed. Anderson v. City of Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 573, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1511, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985).
The district court’s findings of fact on the second component of the on sale bar issue are as follows:
[Pratt] had made notes and drawings in December, 1984, illustrating the .use of shock absorbing rods and stabilizers on the weigh hopper, flexibly mounting the sub-frame to prevent vibration transfer and enclosing of the entire machine in panels, to prevent air currents and hopper vibrations from affecting the accuracy of his weigh measurements. Pratt also began constructing his mix tank and slurry delivery system in December.
The January 12 prototype had all of the components of the ingredient mixing and slurry delivery systems that are covered by the “mixing” claims of the patent. Mr. Pratt testified that the January 12 system also cumulatively'weighed ingredients, and it is apparent that the January 12 machine contained all of the elements disclosed in the “cumulative” weigh claims. In addition, the January 12 machine contained some isolation means, and Mr, Pratt’s notes indicate that he was already planning the addition of other isolation means such as panels and stabilizer bars. The Court finds that, at the time Mr. Pratt offered his weigh machines to the Sunbelt Feedlot, he had already built one prototype and was engaged in constructing the January 12 prototype.
Although the evidence was disputed below and on appeal, these factual findings are not clearly erroneous, nor has this court so found them.
Relying on these facts, and not just those that are undisputed, the district court formed a legal conclusion that the totality of circumstances manifests the existence of an on sale bar within the meaning of section 102(b). The district court also held that Micro had not countered defendants’ showing. While these facts suggest that the apparatus offered on December 26, 1984, was something less than both the reduction to practice that occurred some two weeks later and the final form of the invention as installed in March, our cases as well as the singularly important underlying policy of preventing inventors from extending the patent term each require that we affirm the existence of an invalidating offer for sale. The addition of elements improving the invention after the attempted commercialization does not trump the district court’s separate factual findings: Pratt attempted to commercially exploit an apparatus by offering it to Isaac in December 1984, and the offered apparatus included either every element claimed in the ’971 patent or the necessary suggestion to combine the offered elements with prior art, such as existing isolation means, to render obvious any remaining elements.
Micro’s arguments on appeal amount to a request that we reverse the holding of an on sale bar because several features of the patented invention were not fully embodied in, or obvious in light of, the apparatus offered for sale to Isaac in December 1984.* Specifi*1554cally, Micro argues that Pratt had not completed, substantially completed or come close to completing his invention, he was not confident that the invention was “highly likely” to work for its intended purpose, and the invention was not commercially marketable at the time of his offer to Isaac. To support this court’s reversal on section 102(b), Micro offers evidence of the development process of Pratt’s apparatus, his trial testimony, and requests that we compare the patent claims to the apparatus that Pratt claims existed at the time of the offer.
Micro’s evidence and arguments were submitted to the district court, which considered and rejected them during a trial of more than two weeks during which it made credibility determinations that are virtually unreviewable by this court. Moreover, Pratt’s testimony about his subjective intentions is unhelpful. See, e.g., TP Lab., Inc. v. Professional Positioners, Inc., 724 F.2d 965, 972, 220 USPQ 577, 583 (Fed.Cir.1984) (in the context of considering objective indicia of experimentation, “the expression by an inventor of his subjective intent ... particularly after institution of litigation, is generally of minimal value.”) The district court found that Pratt’s offer to Isaac added most elements of his ’971 patent to the prior art, and this addition-rendered obvious all additional elements found in the patent. I see no error. We should refrain from reversing a section 102(b) determination using the secret, subjective and self-interested beliefs of an inventor.

The district court stated that Micro failed to direct the court "to elements of the claims not fully embodied in, or obvious in light of, the January 12, 1985” ... prototype. The relevant inquiry is what was being offered for sale to Isaac, not whether the January 1985 prototype was substantially the same as the claimed invention. However, this error is harmless.