[00:00:00] Speaker 04: Our last case this morning is Boss, GmbH, versus Makato, USA, 2021, 1793. [00:00:10] Speaker 04: Mr. Sapko, when you are ready. [00:00:35] Speaker 02: It feels good to get that off. [00:00:39] Speaker 04: It's a complication. [00:00:44] Speaker 02: Thank you, Your Honors, and may it please the Court. [00:00:47] Speaker 02: The district court's approach to summary judgment in this case was highly unusual, to say the least. [00:00:57] Speaker 02: overlooking what should have been fatal defects in the defendant's showing on both obviousness and literal infringement. [00:01:09] Speaker 02: Rather than holding the defendant to the requirements of Rule 56 when seeking summary judgment, the district court overlooked those defects and made its own findings of fact divorced from any evidence that was presented by the parties. [00:01:26] Speaker 05: But not divorced from the prior art, which is evidence, right? [00:01:34] Speaker 05: And the judge here said, I know this is unusual, but I can actually understand all of this. [00:01:42] Speaker 05: And it's clear to me what the teachings are for this particular prior art. [00:01:50] Speaker 05: Why is that? [00:01:52] Speaker 05: You're not saying that's never permissible. [00:01:53] Speaker 05: I don't think you could say that after wires and whatnot. [00:01:57] Speaker 05: But why is it impermissible here? [00:02:01] Speaker 02: For a number of reasons, Your Honor. [00:02:04] Speaker 02: First off, the evidence that was before the district court with respect to the complexity of the technology flies in the face of the district court's conclusion that it was so simple that you could just look at these four references and piece them together without any explanatory testimony. [00:02:23] Speaker 02: and decide that the asserted claims were obvious. [00:02:27] Speaker 03: What about the intrinsic record? [00:02:28] Speaker 03: Can't the judge also consider that while looking at these other references? [00:02:34] Speaker 02: The judge can certainly consider the intrinsic record, Your Honor. [00:02:37] Speaker 03: Then you have the complaint. [00:02:39] Speaker 03: You have the answer. [00:02:40] Speaker 03: You have the patent. [00:02:42] Speaker 03: You have the written description. [00:02:44] Speaker 03: Then you have these other references. [00:02:50] Speaker 03: Why is that not enough? [00:02:52] Speaker 03: If the judge looks at it and says, given that this is not a sophisticated technology or complex technology, I can see what's happening here. [00:03:03] Speaker 02: Well, first off, Your Honor, I would say the record suggests that it was not an unsophisticated technology. [00:03:10] Speaker 02: Both sides submitted evidence from their technical experts that the level of ordinary skill in the art required an engineering degree and several years of practical experience in a specific field of technology, a related field of technology. [00:03:25] Speaker 02: But even if you were to assume that these references on their face were understandable to the district court judge who was aided by a technical advisor in this case, there was no evidence in the record with respect to how those references applied to the claims. [00:03:45] Speaker 02: There was no evidence in the record with respect to why a person of ordinary skill in the art [00:03:50] Speaker 02: would have taken these four references, combined them in a way that arrived at the invention that was recited in the asserted claims. [00:04:00] Speaker 04: Counsel, you've asserted technical flaws in the proceeding, but frankly it looks to me as though you've sued under a patent that is, you've sued someone who was not infringing under a patent that is [00:04:21] Speaker 04: Apparently invalid. [00:04:23] Speaker 04: The judge could look at all the prior art, and we can look at all the prior art. [00:04:27] Speaker 04: So you want us to send it back because of technical flaws. [00:04:32] Speaker 02: I would respectfully disagree with that, Your Honor. [00:04:34] Speaker 02: The evidence that was put in front of the district court on the district court's claim construction was one-sided and unequivocal. [00:04:42] Speaker 02: There was infringement there. [00:04:44] Speaker 02: The only contrary evidence on literal infringement was testimony that was put forward by the defendant from its technical expert applying a different claim construction, a narrower claim construction, even than the claim construction that the district court issued in its opinion, which we never had an opportunity to submit evidence to rebut. [00:05:07] Speaker 02: But with respect to the validity, Your Honor, [00:05:13] Speaker 02: It's easy for the district court judge, with the aid of a technical advisor, to say this is simple. [00:05:18] Speaker 02: And I would be able to put it together in a way that arguably, from the district court's perspective, invalidated the claims, rendered them obvious. [00:05:27] Speaker 02: But that's an error in perspective, Your Honor. [00:05:30] Speaker 02: On summary judgment, the question isn't whether the district court judge and his technical advisor can understand the patents. [00:05:38] Speaker 02: The question is whether a jury, without the aid [00:05:42] Speaker 02: Any explanatory testimony whatsoever would have been able to take these four references, decide what parts of these references apply to which parts of the claims, combine them, apply them to the claims, and also make findings with respect to how or why a person of ordinary skill in the art would have made that combination. [00:06:06] Speaker 02: There was nothing in the record that would have allowed the defendant to present any of that supporting evidence to a jury at trial. [00:06:15] Speaker 02: So to say that a jury would have been able to put themselves in the position of a person of ordinary skill in the art and make a for-reference combination [00:06:25] Speaker 02: that the PTAB didn't even find obvious. [00:06:29] Speaker 02: It defies credibility from my perspective, but it also flies in the face of Rule 56. [00:06:38] Speaker 04: Did the PTAB have all the references before it? [00:06:42] Speaker 02: The PTAB only had two of the references before it. [00:06:45] Speaker 02: I think it's also notable, Your Honor, that the gist of the defendant's obviousness theory here was that there were Chinese proceedings on a Chinese patent, a German proceeding on a German patent. [00:06:57] Speaker 02: They found similar claims under their respective laws. [00:07:00] Speaker 05: But the district court said, that's not a theory I can accept, right? [00:07:04] Speaker 05: I'm going to forget about the foreign proceedings. [00:07:09] Speaker 05: I got the prior art. [00:07:11] Speaker 05: I can understand this. [00:07:13] Speaker 05: I can do maybe with the help, but maybe even without the help of at least the revised child declaration, not as evidence, but as essentially an additional lawyer's brief. [00:07:27] Speaker 05: And lawyers in their briefs all the time say, look at column two, line 36, look at this. [00:07:38] Speaker 05: What I don't have from the patent owner is specific challenges to specific aspects of the application of the prior art to particular claim elements or even the motivation. [00:07:54] Speaker 05: What I have are a series of, my goodness, the other side hasn't done enough, but nothing concrete. [00:08:00] Speaker 05: And it's very hard to get a grip on why the procedural [00:08:09] Speaker 05: unusual features make any difference here without the concrete presentation that you didn't make? [00:08:18] Speaker 02: Fair point, Your Honor, but the reason that concrete presentation wasn't made is because the defendant never put forward anything even remotely comparable to what the district court put in its decision. [00:08:31] Speaker 02: about which portions of the references were being relied upon, how they were being combined, and why they were being combined. [00:08:39] Speaker 03: It seems to me that had you rebutted strongly at the summary judgment, we may be looking at a different case, but you didn't. [00:08:48] Speaker 02: The obligation was on the defendant to at least establish that there was a triable issue with respect to the factual findings that underlie any obviousness defense. [00:09:04] Speaker 02: Under Graham, it's got to be the scope and content of the prior art. [00:09:07] Speaker 02: It's got to be the comparison of the prior art to the asserted claims. [00:09:12] Speaker 02: And it's got to be the how and why a person of ordinary skill in the art would have made that combination. [00:09:19] Speaker 02: The sum and substance of the obviousness theory that was articulated, it appears on pages 16 and 17 of our brief, it was a quote of the claim with footnotes to the Chinese and German findings [00:09:35] Speaker 02: and four of the references with no pinpoint sites, no page sites whatsoever pointing us to what portions of these references they were relying on or how they were putting it together. [00:09:48] Speaker 02: It's also notable that the foreign proceedings that they were pointing to didn't apply the four reference combination that the district court ended up applying. [00:09:59] Speaker 02: The Chinese proceeding was applying two references out of the four. [00:10:03] Speaker 02: The German proceeding was applying two other references out of the four. [00:10:08] Speaker 02: It was only the district court that put those together. [00:10:11] Speaker 02: And it was only the district court in its summary judgment decision that articulated how it was putting those together. [00:10:18] Speaker 02: We never had anything to rebut. [00:10:20] Speaker 02: Our response was the obviousness defense that the defendant was putting forward in its briefing was based on the foreign proceedings. [00:10:30] Speaker 02: And the district court judge agreed with us. [00:10:33] Speaker 02: It struck the Sal affidavit. [00:10:36] Speaker 02: And going to your question earlier, Judge Toronto, the district court didn't say, OK, I'm not going to look at the foreign proceedings. [00:10:44] Speaker 02: I'm going to read from the district court's opinion at Appendix 24. [00:10:49] Speaker 02: The district court said, when Mr. Sao's affidavit is accepted as attorney argument, McAuto sets forth each claim element of the asserted claims, summarizes the applicable prior art reference, and by extension from the foreign decisions, applies the prior art reference to the asserted claims. [00:11:08] Speaker 02: So the district court judge was relying on the application of the prior art from those foreign proceedings, the rationale, [00:11:17] Speaker 02: to develop its own obviousness defense here. [00:11:24] Speaker 02: And just that reliance, I would disagree with your honor about the appropriateness of the district court judge saying, OK, I've got inadmissible evidence here. [00:11:34] Speaker 02: I'm going to ignore the inadmissibility of it, and I'm just going to accept it all as attorney argument. [00:11:40] Speaker 02: Rule 56 requires, and the case law [00:11:44] Speaker 02: out of the Federal Circuit and the Sixth Circuit says that if you've got inadmissible evidence, you can't rely on that for summary judgment purposes. [00:11:54] Speaker 02: So it's inappropriate to say, OK, I'm just going to convert this and pretend it's attorney argument. [00:12:00] Speaker 02: This was inadmissible evidence that we challenged, and it was excluded. [00:12:04] Speaker 02: So it should not have been relied upon by the district court judge. [00:12:10] Speaker 02: I'd like to speak briefly about the literal infringement issue and the district court judge's approach to that. [00:12:17] Speaker 02: We were never given an opportunity to present evidence on literal infringement under the district court's revised claim construction. [00:12:26] Speaker 02: And you might say, OK, well, it wasn't that different. [00:12:30] Speaker 02: The district court can look at the reference, well, not the references, can look at the accused product, [00:12:37] Speaker 02: can look at the claim construction, can make a factual finding on its own as to whether or not there's infringement. [00:12:44] Speaker 02: But it's important to note here that the district court didn't have evidence from either side applying this claim construction for purposes of infringement. [00:12:55] Speaker 02: We absolutely would have created at least a disputed issue of fact with respect to infringement there. [00:13:02] Speaker 02: In fact, there was testimony from our technical expert that was cited somewhat anticipating a portion of where the district court was going that would have been sufficient to at least create a disputed issue of fact. [00:13:17] Speaker 02: So I had reserved time for rebuttal. [00:13:21] Speaker 02: I'd like to continue to reserve that. [00:13:24] Speaker 02: And I'm not certain whether that time is my 15 minutes countdown or my 11. [00:13:28] Speaker 04: That's your remaining time for rebuttal. [00:13:31] Speaker 02: I'm sorry? [00:13:31] Speaker 04: That is your remaining time for rebuttal. [00:13:33] Speaker 02: OK. [00:13:34] Speaker 02: So barring other questions from the court, I'll save the rest of my time for rebuttal. [00:13:51] Speaker 04: Mr. Newman. [00:13:57] Speaker 01: Good morning, Your Honor. [00:13:57] Speaker 01: I'm Jason Newman on behalf of McAuto. [00:14:00] Speaker 01: May it please the court to respond to some of the discussion here earlier today. [00:14:06] Speaker 01: First off, in terms of the citation to page 24 in the opinion for the district court on the summary judgment finding where [00:14:23] Speaker 01: uses the phrase extension from the foreign decisions. [00:14:27] Speaker 01: I don't read that as giving any reliance on the actual substance of the foreign decisions. [00:14:33] Speaker 01: I think he's using that in the context when he's referring to the affidavit and just how it's structured in terms of describing or pinpointing how those references, the specific portions of the references can be seen in terms of the [00:14:50] Speaker 03: How do you see those foreign references factoring into the judge's decision? [00:14:59] Speaker 01: I think he was very clear that he was not relying on them. [00:15:04] Speaker 03: But he did rely on them, right? [00:15:07] Speaker 03: I mean, to some extent, at least to some extent, or in relation to them. [00:15:13] Speaker 01: I mean, I think in some relation, it gets perhaps a little complicated with the way the child feday, but at least in its original form, was presented in that it did discuss in terms of the foreign references. [00:15:27] Speaker 01: And that was done to try to compare the work in the Leone testimony that the Chinese patent was the same as the US patent. [00:15:36] Speaker 01: At least it served the same claims. [00:15:38] Speaker 01: And so there was discussion in there to try to link the two. [00:15:43] Speaker 01: But I think when the judge in his opinion, I think when he looks at that, he's very clear that he's not relying back on the outcome of any of that. [00:15:51] Speaker 01: I think if anything, Your Honor, it's just in terms of showing where in the references that we cited in the court relies on, you could find that more pinpoint citation than just the document itself. [00:16:09] Speaker 04: But your problem is the [00:16:12] Speaker 04: Court made its own fact findings based on attorney argument. [00:16:18] Speaker 01: Well, Your Honor, to that point, I think that what he looks at in that attorney area, there's nothing in the Chalif David that is new or is not independent of what's in those four references that he looks at. [00:16:37] Speaker 01: So he may look at it in some regard to see those specific places. [00:16:44] Speaker 01: But I think in terms of whether or not a late jury could understand that, [00:16:48] Speaker 01: A lay jury would also have the benefit of opening and closing arguments. [00:16:54] Speaker 01: There's also I think in we're in the concurring opinion they know that in invalidity decisions trial courts are. [00:17:03] Speaker 01: You know, encouraged to give special interrogatories on that issue, the jury instructions on that issue. [00:17:11] Speaker 01: So I think there are ways in which a lay jury could find, you know, could take a look at this. [00:17:21] Speaker 01: just visually looking at some of them, which obviously all of these patents include figures to aid in reference, and I think the visuals that the trial court put in its brief are very telling on the issue, and even in terms of... [00:17:52] Speaker 01: In terms of describing, I think the main one is the Schlicht reference, which is the aluminum guide rail version of what the 695 patent does. [00:18:00] Speaker 01: It says on page 35 of his opinion in order that Schlicht, with exception of not being a two-part guide rail design, is almost identical in overall configuration to the 695 patent. [00:18:11] Speaker 01: It has a common owner, or a common, excuse me, a common inventor. [00:18:15] Speaker 01: It is the same owner of the patent. [00:18:17] Speaker 01: And then if you look at the 695 patent, even in the description of itself, and this would be Appendix 74, where it states the combination of the plastic and the aluminum part is not rattle-free under all circumstances. [00:18:35] Speaker 01: And that's why the 695 platen is drawn to creating the rail system, the plastic guide rail system, which then you can see in the other two references almost right on their face that that has been done in the prior right before that two-part system to then combine it back. [00:18:55] Speaker 01: So I think even essentially looking at the figures, you can certainly gather [00:19:03] Speaker 01: I would say a lay jury could gather additional curiosity from that if they wanted to then look at, you know, the reference numerals and the citation. [00:19:10] Speaker 01: I think there certainly is a basis for a lay jury to make those findings. [00:19:17] Speaker 01: And, you know, also just want to point out that this would be in the Eastern District of Michigan. [00:19:21] Speaker 01: That particular district is the world headquarters of three automotive manufacturers, a number of suppliers. [00:19:28] Speaker 01: I think that a lay jury in that district would be [00:19:31] Speaker 01: You know more than more than capable of making those findings and in regard to the technical advisor You know to that point there there was the order when we agreed to that that The communications between the technical advisor and the judge would remain Confidential we wouldn't know about those I know there's reference to them the number of hours that the technical advisor put into this and [00:19:58] Speaker 01: He also put, obviously, from the court's opinion, a lot of time into the infringement issues, and I think that infringement issue is the much more complex issue when you look at it, determining whether or not there's that, you know, groove, groove or groove slot, however you want to think about it. [00:20:15] Speaker 01: In that particular issue, so I don't think we can just look at the number of hours and assume that he must have dedicated this all to the The invalidity side and then that was extraordinarily complex because I think when you look at it As the judge found that that particular issue under these particular circumstances wasn't wasn't that particularly complex the [00:20:38] Speaker 05: Do you have anything to say about the agreement about a relatively high level of skill in the art for the person of ordinary skill in the art here? [00:20:48] Speaker 01: Yes, Your Honor, and I think that that really goes to, you probably would need a high level of skill in the art, and certainly we retained an expert in injection molding to really address those issues on the infringement side. [00:21:04] Speaker 01: The issues of how do you look at this particular product to determine, you get into a situation where the claim construction is a long, narrow, channel-shut, [00:21:16] Speaker 01: channel cutter depression, you know, and then to understand what that would mean and how that would apply to the part. [00:21:25] Speaker 01: I think that is the part that you really need the, you know, [00:21:30] Speaker 01: a high level of skill in the art to understand. [00:21:32] Speaker 01: I think when it comes to the issue at Invalidity, that issue isn't an issue at all in terms of Invalidity because I don't think there's any dispute that the Nagano patent or the Gaspin patent have both a groove-groove arrangement as put forth by either side. [00:21:49] Speaker 01: So that's the distinction that I would make, Your Honor, is that [00:21:52] Speaker 01: When we're talking about that, perhaps requiring a bachelor's degree or more, I think that's more in the terms of the infringement side. [00:22:00] Speaker 01: And I think that that's where that testimony on those issues were directed was to the infringement and to those issues of looking at the orientation and trying to determine the structure [00:22:19] Speaker 01: the guide rails in those two parts and how they work. [00:22:29] Speaker 01: To just again address the P tab, it did have, it didn't look at the same four references. [00:22:36] Speaker 01: I believe it had the Schlex patent and the Beck reference. [00:22:41] Speaker 01: I don't think it looked at the other two. [00:22:43] Speaker 01: And in terms of the claim construction there, [00:22:48] Speaker 01: with the two side walls. [00:22:50] Speaker 01: That was done in reference to the figure 13 of the Schlicht patent because the argument for the T-tab was a 102 decision and whether or not there was a, I guess, a slit in figure 3 that might have shown two groups coming together in that. [00:23:06] Speaker 01: So I don't think that the P-tab decision is particularly helpful or instructive under these circumstances. [00:23:21] Speaker 01: In terms of the literal infringement, I don't think that, number one, I don't think that there is a big change at all in the claim terms, how they were originally constructed and how they were constructed in the court's order here. [00:23:41] Speaker 01: I think that there are several items that are instructive why this wouldn't require a remand. [00:23:47] Speaker 01: The first is that the court is very clear in its claim construction that it was adopting all of the dictionary definitions. [00:23:57] Speaker 01: It was very clear that they was making this on a preliminary basis, but it did say that it was adopting all of those. [00:24:04] Speaker 01: When it does do its modification, it adopts the further language from a dictionary definition that BOS put forward. [00:24:13] Speaker 01: Even in BOS's challenge in summary judgment proceedings, you know, they raised that, [00:24:21] Speaker 01: we were misapplying the claim construction, or Dr. Malloy was in his testimony. [00:24:27] Speaker 01: But even if it was and they recognized that, that was put forth. [00:24:33] Speaker 01: Mr. Parker had that as a deposition. [00:24:35] Speaker 01: He knew what Mr. Malloy's testimony was. [00:24:37] Speaker 01: He acknowledged that he had read the dictionary definitions, that he had read the court's claim construction. [00:24:44] Speaker 01: And even barring that, he didn't have additional testimony that if Dr. Malloy's opinion, which we believe is impermissibly broad, is adopted, here are the reasons why that wouldn't matter. [00:24:59] Speaker 01: This project would still infringe. [00:25:01] Speaker 01: And on pages [00:25:08] Speaker 01: 50 through 54 of the court's opinion, he goes through what he describes or what the district court describes as the first and second alternative infringement arguments. [00:25:22] Speaker 01: And so he goes through what was presented by BOS at the summary judgment hearing in terms of how they would essentially still infringe. [00:25:35] Speaker 01: And he went through those and found [00:25:37] Speaker 01: that there was no infringement that the They would still have to be because of the use of the term elongation in the claims and the use of the claim construction for groove to be long or narrow That the groove would have to be long in the elongation the direction and narrow in the width direction so he addressed those concerns your honor and [00:26:01] Speaker 01: He obviously made the findings that he did. [00:26:03] Speaker 01: We would ask that the court affirm the district court's decision. [00:26:11] Speaker 01: And unless there are other questions, I'll yield back my time. [00:26:14] Speaker 04: Council, you should know that I found your brief to be full of misspellings. [00:26:23] Speaker 04: Ten or a dozen misspellings were used to a higher quality of brief here. [00:26:28] Speaker 04: And while it isn't going to affect whether you win or lose, I think it is important for you to know that we did note that and think ill of it. [00:26:40] Speaker 01: I appreciate the constructive criticism, Your Honor, and I regret that occurred. [00:26:50] Speaker 04: Mr. Sapko has a little over two minutes of rebuttal time. [00:27:00] Speaker 02: Thank you, Your Honor. [00:27:01] Speaker 02: I'll try to be brief and just address some of the issues that Mr. Newman raised. [00:27:05] Speaker 02: First, on his last point, he said the judge anticipated the infringement issues of the summary judgment hearing. [00:27:12] Speaker 02: Well, that's just not true. [00:27:15] Speaker 02: The judge didn't issue his modified claim construction until he issued his summary judgment opinion. [00:27:22] Speaker 02: So we weren't discussing the claim construction that the judge ultimately based his summary judgment of no literal infringement on. [00:27:31] Speaker 02: And just for illustration purposes, I've got the infamous second part with me. [00:27:38] Speaker 02: The whole case is about whether this is a groove [00:27:43] Speaker 02: I can promise you, had we been given an opportunity to present evidence under the new claim construction, our expert would have said that's a groove. [00:27:52] Speaker 02: At the very least, there would have been a disputed issue of material fact. [00:27:57] Speaker 02: Council also suggested there was enough in the record [00:28:02] Speaker 02: to put us on notice, I believe, of what their obviousness defense was. [00:28:07] Speaker 02: I'll just cite the court to the Cooper v. Ford case, 748, F second, 677. [00:28:14] Speaker 02: At page 680, this court said, the federal rules do not contemplate that a court may dispose of a cause by summary judgment when the basis for the judgment was not raised by the movement with sufficient precision. [00:28:26] Speaker 02: for the non-movement to respond. [00:28:29] Speaker 02: We had one quoted claim with footnotes, no pin sites, citing to inadmissible evidence. [00:28:35] Speaker 02: From that, the district court wrote 45 pages of a 60 page opinion of its own findings, not based in any evidence in the record other than the district court and the technical advisor's own interpretation of the four references. [00:28:51] Speaker 02: Council tried to sidestep the [00:28:54] Speaker 02: the high level of person of ordinary skill in the art as infringement related, this court knows full well. [00:29:01] Speaker 02: That's a very important issue with respect to an obviousness analysis also. [00:29:08] Speaker 02: Council also suggests the jury was fully capable of looking at these references with the argument that would come in and making a finding that the patent is invalid. [00:29:18] Speaker 02: The claims are invalid. [00:29:19] Speaker 02: We're not talking about a sufficiency of the evidence test after a jury trial here. [00:29:24] Speaker 02: We're talking about summary judgment. [00:29:26] Speaker 02: The defendant was obligated to come forward with evidence not only that supported an obviousness finding, but would have compelled as the only possible conclusion that these claims were obvious. [00:29:38] Speaker 02: I see that my time is up, Your Honors. [00:29:40] Speaker 02: Unless you have some questions, I'll rest. [00:29:43] Speaker 04: Thank you, counsel. [00:29:44] Speaker 04: We'll take the case under submission.