Hyatt v. Matal

District Court, District of Columbia·Decided August 1, 2018·No. Civil Action No. 2009-1872·Published

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

) GILBERT P. HYATT, ) ) Plaintiff, ) Civil Action No. 05-2310 (RCL) ) Civil Action No. 09-1864 (RCL) v. ) Civil Action No. 09-1872 (RCL) ) ANDREI IANCU, ) ) Defendant. ) ) MEMORANDUM OPINIONl

I. Background

Before the Court is a trio of actions brought under 35 U.S.C. §145, related to three of Gilbert Hyatt’s applications to patent features of his “600- family” and “700-family” specifications that purport to describe innovations Mr. Hyatt made in the field of video processing and associated computing and memory architectures in the mid-1980s Plaintiff Gilbert P. Hyatt is a proliflc inventor Who has received more than seventy issued patents and has, pending at various stages of prosecution and appeal, nearly 400 patent applications before the United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), the federal agency responsible for examining patent applications and for granting U.S. patents. 35 U.S.C. § l, et seq. Andrei Iancu is the named defendant in these matters

in his official capacity as the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and the

l Although these cases Were not consolidated for trial, because of their complex but nevertheless overlapping records and litigation histories, and common legal issues, the Court is issuing this single opinion concerning the merits in all three matters. Separate judgments Will issue in each case.

l

Director of the PTO.2 Because of the nature and lengthy history of these actions, the Court refers to the defendant as “PTO” throughout this opinion.

Mr. Hyatt brought these actions pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 145 to obtain patents on three of his patent applications following decisions in the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, now known as the Patent and Trial Appeal Board (the “Board”).3 Section 145 allows an applicant dissatisfied with the decision of the Board to “have remedy by civil action” in district court, rather than taking an appeal directly to the F ederal Circuit.4 See also Kappos v. Hyatt, 566 U.S. 431 (2012). In a series of opinions issued August 23, 2016, the Court found genuine disputes of material fact precluded summary judgment in these matters, which therefore required trials on the merits.5

After the Court resolved the summary judgment motions, however`, the PTO moved to dismiss these actions for prosecution laches. Def.’s Mot Dismiss, ECF No. 91. In that set of motions, PTO argued that Hyatt’s conduct in prosecuting these three patent applications, as well as approximately 400 others, called for dismissal. Id. at 8-9. Mr. Hyatt, on the other hand, argued that the PTO was responsible for extensive delay in adjudicating many of the applications, Pl. Mot. Dismiss, ECF No. 101 at 7-9, and made the case that he was entitled to discovery. Ia'. at 37-38. On March 16, 2017, the Court found that genuine disputes of material fact required treating the motions to dismiss as if they were for summary judgment, and denied them accordingly. ECF No.

116.

2 Andrei Iancu has been automatically substituted for Joseph Matal in these actions under Fed. R. Civ. P. 25(d).

3 Case number 05-cv-2310 relates to the 08/457,211 application (the ’211 application); No. 09-cv-1864 relates to the 08/456,398 application (the ’398 application); and No. 09-cv-1872 relates to the 08/431,639 application (the ’639 application). All docket citations herein are to 05-cv-2310 unless otherwise specified

4 At the time Mr. Hyatt filed the present cases, venue lay by statute with the District Court of the District of Columbia. In 201 1, Congress amended the venue provision of certain patent-related statutes, including §145, Such that suits under those sections are henceforth to be filed in the Eastern District of Virginia. Pub. L. 112-29, §9 (Sept. 16, 2011).

5 See ECF No. 75 (05-cv-2310); ECF No. 71 (09-cv-1864); ECF No. 72 (09-cv-1872).

With leave of Court, the PTO subsequently amended its answers to assert prosecution laches as an affirmative defense. ECF No. 123. The Court set the PTO’s affirmative defense of prosecution laches across all three actions for a bench trial,6 which also would consider evidence relating to Mr. Hyatt’s approximately 400 other pending applications ECF No. 150. The PTO, bearing the burden of proof on the affirmative defense of prosecution laches and upon agreement of the parties, presented its case-in-chief first. During the five trial days beginning October 6, 2017, during which the PTO presented its case-in-chief, the PTO presented the testimony of three witnesses The parties also introduced a number of exhibits.7

At the close of the PTO’s case-in-chief on prosecution laches, Mr. Hyatt moved for judgment pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(c). Upon consideration of the evidence and arguments presented during trial and the entire records in these cases up to' that time, and review of the relevant case law, the Court found the PTO failed to prove unreasonable and unexplained delay that would support dismissal for prosecution laches, and accordingly granted Mr. Hyatt’s motion.8 The Court’s ruling on prosecution laches necessitated trials on the merits in these three cases. Each of the three trials featured three witnesses: the plaintiff called Mr. Hyatt and his expert witness, Mr. Bradford Hite, while PTO called its expert, Dr. Kenneth Castleman.

Plaintiff s expert Mr. Hite has booth a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Califomia State University at Northridge. For the past 23 years, he

has worked as an electrical engineer for ITT Corporation (including as a technical lead on certain

6 The PTO’s prosecution laches argument, and the accompanying trial, also applied to a fourth case, 09-1869, arising out of a §145 matter related to patent application 08/472,062, entitled “A System of Weighting and Scaling Image Information.” The affirmative defense was the last unresolved issue in that case, so it did not proceed to a trial on the merits.

7 Because the proceedings regarding prosecution laches are part of the record in each of these three cases, in addition to one other, see 09-cv-1869, the Court includes for background some citations to that October 2017 trial.

8 In addition to the present Opinion and in accord with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 52(a)(1), the Court today also issued a separate Memorandum Opinion, Findings of Fact, and Conclusions of Law further explaining its ruling on the PTO’s affirmative defense.

projects), Magellan Systems, Raytheon, Curtis-Wright, Lear Astronics, MiniMed, RoundTrip Technologies, SiRF, Quallion LLC, Paylon Medical, ASML, and Neural Analytics. Trial Tr. 32:25-49:5 (Nov. 14, 2017 AM Session) (09-1872). Mr. Hite has worked on complex electrical engineering projects involving missile defense radars, flight control systems, the Global Positioning System (“GPS”) for consumer and military applications, glucose meters and insulin pumps for diabetics and cancer pain-management, long-distance tracking, battery modules for military aircraft and space applications, avionics computers, and Doppler radar imaging for concussions in football.

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