Federal Circuit Remands Waters' Drug Testing Patent Dispute with Cohesive Technologies

Holding:

In this infringement suit over patents relating to a process used in drug testing, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the district court erred in issuing a judgment as a matter of law ("JMOL") for plaintiff Cohesive Technologies, Inc. ("Cohesive") on the issue of anticipation, rather than allow the jury to decide the issue. The Federal Circuit reasoned that a court cannot refuse to submit the issue of anticipation to the jury simply because the accused infringer has also asserted an obviousness defense. It is for the litigants -- not the court -- to make the strategic decision as to whether to assert one, both, or neither of these defenses in a jury trial. The tests for anticipation and obviousness are different, and it does not follow that every technically anticipated invention would also have been obvious. In this regard, an accused infringer that introduces a prior art reference and argues that each and every limitation of a claim is found in that single prior art reference generally is entitled to have anticipation decided by the finder of fact. That is precisely what defendant Waters Corp. ("Waters") did in this case. Accordingly, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of judgment as a matter of law on the issue of anticipation, and remanded for further proceedings consistent with its opinion.

Detailed Summary:

This is a patent infringement case. Cohesive brought three related actions accusing Waters of infringing its two patents relating to high-performance liquid chromatography (“HPLC”).  Opinion, p. 1. HPLC is a process for separating, identifying, and measuring compounds contained in a liquid. Pharmaceutical companies often use HPLC in drug testing to separate absorbed compounds from blood. Id., p. 3.

Waters argued that the district court erred by granting a directed verdict—i.e., judgment as a matter of law—for Cohesive on the issue of anticipation, rather than allow the jury to decide the issue.

Waters’ contention was in reaction to the district court’s conclusion…

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