Smith & Nephew, Inc. v. Interlace Medical, Inc.

955 F. Supp. 2d 69, 2013 WL 3289085, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90625
CourtDistrict Court, D. Massachusetts
DecidedJune 27, 2013
DocketCivil Action No. 10-10951-RWZ
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 955 F. Supp. 2d 69 (Smith & Nephew, Inc. v. Interlace Medical, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Massachusetts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Smith & Nephew, Inc. v. Interlace Medical, Inc., 955 F. Supp. 2d 69, 2013 WL 3289085, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90625 (D. Mass. 2013).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION

ZOBEL, District Judge.

Plaintiff Smith & Nephew, Inc. (“S & N”), sued defendants Interlace Medical, Inc., and Hologic, Inc. (collectively “Hologic”),1 for infringing two patents: U.S. Patent No. 7,226,459 (“the '459 patent”), relating to an arthroscopic surgical instrument, and U.S. Patent No. 8,061,359 (“the '359 patent”), relating to a surgical endoscopic cutting device and method for its use. After a ten-day trial, the jury found all the asserted patent claims valid and infringed. The case then proceeded to a two-day bench trial on whether S & N procured the '359 patent by inequitable conduct. This opinion resolves Hologie’s pending motions for judgment as a matter of law on the issues tried to the jury, and decides the inequitable conduct claim from the bench trial. The opinion also addresses S & N’s motion for a permanent injunction and certain questions regarding damages.

I. Judgment as a Matter of Law

Hologic filed one motion for judgment as a matter of law after S & N rested its case, and a second such motion at the close of all the evidence. Together, these two motions cover practically every issue tried in the case.

The jury found that Hologic had directly infringed the '459 patent, and had induced infringement and contributed to infringement of the '359 patent. It also concluded that none of the asserted patent claims were invalid for anticipation or obviousness, that the '359 patent was entitled to an earlier priority date than its filing date, and that the asserted claims of the '359 patent met the enablement and written description requirements. After reviewing the record, I am persuaded that the jury had a legally sufficient evidentiary basis for the factual determinations that underlie these conclusions. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a); cf. Function Media, LLC v. Google, Inc., 708 F.3d 1310, 1329 (Fed.Cir.2013) (juries may return general verdicts on legal questions that rest on underlying fac[72]*72tual questions). The motions for judgment as a matter of law are therefore denied.

II. Inequitable Conduct

On December 10 and' December 11, 2012, I held a two-day bench trial on Ho-logic’s claim that S & N obtained the '359 patent by inequitable conduct. Based on the evidence adduced at that bench trial and in the previous jury trial, I find the following facts and reject Hologie’s inequitable conduct claim.

A. Background2

In about 1996, Dr. Marc Hans Emanuel combined a surgical cutting instrument with an endoscope to create an endoscopic cutting device. In his prototype of the device, he used a commercially available endoscope manufactured by a company named Olympus.

After obtaining several related European patents, Emanuel filed his first U.S. patent application on the invention in 2000. The application was eventually granted, and a patent issued as U.S. Patent No. 7,249,602 (“the '602 patent”). The original patent application claimed a surgical endoscopic cutting device including both a viewing part (the endoscope) and a cutting part. Figure 1 of the application showed the entire, assembled device, while Figure 2 showed just the viewing part of the device.3 The latter figure was drawn based on an unmodified Olympus endoscope. Moreover, the application emphasizes that one important part of the invention was a further outlet channel on the viewing part of the device; that further outlet channel already existed on the Olympus endoscope. However, the patent application did not disclose the Olympus endoscope as relevant prior art.

Emanuel assigned his rights in the invention to S & N, which prosecuted the '602 patent through its issuance. In July 2007, S & N filed a continuation application based on the '602 patent; that continuation led to the issuance of the '359 patent, which claims methods of using Emanuel’s device to remove tissue from the uterus. The '359 patent was prosecuted by S & N’s in-house attorney Norman Hainer, and by S & N’s outside counsel Phyllis Kristal of the law firm Fish & Richardson. The '359 patent application did not disclose the Olympus endoscope. However, it did disclose U.S. Patent No. 4,606,330 to Bonnet (“the Bonnet reference”), another device similar to the Olympus endoscope.

Hologic asserts inequitable conduct by Emanuel in affirmatively misrepresenting the Olympus endoscope as his own invention. It also asserts inequitable conduct by both Emanuel and Hainer in fading to disclose the Olympus endoscope as relevant prior art.

B. Analysis

All patent applicants have a duty of candor and good faith towards the Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”). See 37 C.F.R. § 1.56(a). That duty extends not only to the inventor, but to all other persons “substantively involved” in the prosecution of the patent. Id. § 1.56(c)(3). Failure to observe that duty of candor constitutes inequitable conduct, which renders any resulting patent unenforceable. Fox Indus. v. Structural Pres. Sys., 922 F.2d 801, 804 (Fed.Cir.1990).

[73]*73The Federal Circuit has recently clarified the law regarding inequitable conduct in patent prosecution. See Therasense, Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson & Co., 649 F.3d 1276 (2011). Addressing “the problems created by the expansion and overuse of the inequitable conduct doctrine,” the Federal Circuit in Therasense “tightened] the standards for finding both intent and materiality in order to redirect a doctrine that has been overused to the detriment of the public.” Id. at 1285, 1290.

Under Therasense, the party asserting inequitable conduct must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the patentee “acted with the specific intent to deceive the PTO,” something more than mere negligence or even gross negligence. Id. at 1290. In addition, it must prove either that the misconduct at issue was affirmative and egregious, or that it was material to the patent’s issuance — in other words, that the patent would not have issued but for the patentee’s deceptive conduct. Id. at 1291-93.

1. Affirmative Egregious Misconduct

First, Hologic claims that Emanuel engaged in affirmative egregious misconduct by misrepresenting aspects of the Olympus endoscope as his invention. Affirmative egregious misconduct, as described in Therasense, is a relatively narrow category; the examples given in that opinion include truly extreme misdeeds, such as filing unmistakably false affidavits, suborning perjury, bribing witnesses, and actively suppressing evidence. See id. at 1292-93; see also id. at 1285-87 (describing the Supreme Court cases that laid the basis for the inequitable conduct doctrine).

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955 F. Supp. 2d 69, 2013 WL 3289085, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 90625, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/smith-nephew-inc-v-interlace-medical-inc-mad-2013.