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Supreme Court, Federal Circuit Deny Damages for Patent Found to Be Valid and Infringed
On Nov. 13, 2017, a Federal Circuit panel of Chief Judge Prost, Judge Mayer, and Judge Chen issued a unanimous decision, authored by Judge Chen, in Promega Corp. v. Life Technologies Corp., Case Nos. 2013-1011, 2013-1029, 2013-1376. On remand from the United States Supreme Court in Life Techs. Corp. v. Promega Corp., 137 S. Ct. 734, 741 (2017), the panel affirmed a grant of judgment as a matter of law by the United States District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin that the plaintiff failed to prove its infringement case under §§35 U.S.C. 271(a) and 271(f)(1). The panel affirmed the district court's denial for a new trial on damages and infringement, and reaffirmed its prior holdings on enablement, licensing, and active inducement issues.
Life Technologies Corporation (Life) sold genetic testing kits consisting of five components assembled in the United Kingdom. At least one of the five components in each kit was supplied from the United States. Promega Corporation (Promega) is the exclusive licensee of Reissue Patent No. 37,984, directed to methods and kits for analyzing DNA to determine the identity and kinship of organisms. Promega sued Life in district court, and was granted summary judgment that Life's accused products met all of the elements of the asserted claims of the patent. The parties stipulated that Life's total worldwide sales of the accused products were worth $707,618,247, and the district court entered judgment on the jury's verdict in this amount. The district court then granted Life's renewed motion for JMOL under Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(b), holding that no reasonable jury could have found that all of the accused products infringed under 35 U.S.C. §§271(a) and/or 271(f)(1). The district court also denied Promega's motion for a new trial, explaining that Promega waived any argument based on a subset of worldwide sales by failing to respond to Life's argument on this issue in its JMOL briefing.
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