Nilssen v. Osram Sylvania, Inc.

• Decision Date: 17 June 2008
• Docket Number: No. 2007-1348.,No. 2007-1198.,2007-1198.,2007-1348.
• Parties: Ole K. NILSSEN and Geo Foundation, Ltd., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. OSRAM SYLVANIA, INC. and Osram Sylvania Products, Inc., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Federal Circuit

528 F.3d 1352

Ole K. NILSSEN and Geo Foundation, Ltd., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. OSRAM SYLVANIA, INC. and Osram Sylvania Products, Inc., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 2007-1198.

No. 2007-1348.

United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit.

June 17, 2008.

Paul M. Smith, Jenner & Block LLP, of Washington, DC, argued for plaintiffs-appellants. With him on the brief was Marc A. Goldman. Of counsel on the brief were Raymond N. Nimrod, Steven McMahon Zeller and Jonathan Hill, of Chicago, Illinois. Of counsel was Sam Hirsch, of Washington, DC.

Brian D. Sieve, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, of Chicago, Illinois, argued for defendants-appellees. With him on the brief were Garret A. Leach, Kal K. Shah, Serena J. Gondek and Michael I. Cohen.

Before NEWMAN, MAYER and LOURIE, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the court filed by Circuit Judge LOURIE. Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge NEWMAN.

LOURIE, Circuit Judge.

Ole K. Nilssen ("Nilssen") and Geo Foundation, Ltd. (collectively "appellants") appeal from the judgment of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denying appellants' motion for expert witness fees pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(b)(4)(C)(i) and granting a motion for attorney fees to Osram Sylvania, Inc. and Osram Sylvania Products, Inc. (collectively "Osram") pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 285. Nilssen v. Osram Sylvania, Inc., No. 1:01cv3585, 2007 WL 257711, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5792 (N.D.Ill. Jan. 23, 2007). Because the district court did not abuse its discretion in awarding Osram its attorney fees and denying appellants' expert fees, we affirm.

BACKGROUND

Nilssen is the owner and principal inventor of over 200 patents, many of which concern fluorescent light bulbs and ballasts used in combination with those bulbs. In August 2000, Nilssen brought an action alleging that certain light bulbs and ballasts manufactured and sold by Osram infringed certain of Nilssen's patents. Osram denied the allegations and filed a counterclaim alleging that the patents in suit were invalid. Following a bench trial begun in June 2006, the district court issued a decision holding unenforceable the patents at issue due to inequitable conduct committed by Nilssen in procuring and maintaining those patents. Nilssen v. Osram Sylvania, Inc., 440 F.Supp.2d 884 (N.D.Ill.2006). On appeal, we affirmed. Nilssen v. Osram Sylvania, Inc., 504 F.3d 1223 (Fed.Cir.2007). The merits of the inequitable conduct are not now before us, for they have already been adjudicated. Many of the facts pertinent to the court's finding on that issue, however, as well as certain procedural aspects of the inequitable conduct trial, are relevant to the present issue of attorney fees and expert fees and will therefore be recited herein where appropriate.

In their August 2000 complaint, appellants accused Osram of infringing twenty-six of Nilssen's patents. The complaint did not specifically identify which claims were infringed. On February 18, 2003, appellants produced an infringement claim chart applying Nilssen's patents to five accused Osram product lines on a claim limitation-by-claim limitation basis. That claim chart contained fifteen additional Nilssen patents, in addition to the twenty-six patents included in appellants' complaint. One month later, Osram objected to the inclusion of the additional fifteen patents. The court ordered appellants to submit a revised claim chart containing only the original patents at issue by April 18. On that date, appellants served Osram with amended infringement contentions containing seventy-six asserted claims from twenty of the original twenty-six patents in the complaint. The fifteen Nilssen patents added to the initial claim chart and subsequently removed from the amended claim chart were asserted by appellants in a separate infringement case against Osram, filed in the Northern District of Illinois on May 2, 2003. Although appellants had removed six of the originally-included patents, they did not formally release Osram from liability under those patents at that time. It appears that although the six patents were not formally dropped from the suit at that time, Osram understood that only twenty patents remained at issue; in a July 25, 2003 "Statement Regarding Representative Claims and Product Lines," Osram states that appellants "continue to assert 76 claims from 20 patents."

In November 2003, appellants released their expert's report, which analyzed only fourteen of the original twenty-six patents at issue. Again, at that time, appellants did not formally release Osram from liability on the six patents that were not included in the expert's report.¹ That same month, in their opposition to Osram's motion for summary judgment, appellants stated that they were "willing ... to reduce the number of patent claims at issue," and that if no agreement as to the reduction of claims was reached between the parties, then appellants would simply "file a statement of non-liability" concerning the extraneous patents. An attachment accompanying the opposition limited the claims at issue to twenty-five claims from only thirteen patents (one less than in the expert's report).

In July 2005, the court ordered a bench trial on inequitable conduct. Initially scheduled for October, and then December 2005, the trial eventually took place in February 2006. Prior to trial, on October 31, 2005, appellants provided a formal statement of non-liability, reducing the number of patents at issue to twelve, and on December 8 provided a second statement of non-liability reducing the number of patents to eleven. Those eleven patents constituted the patents at issue in the inequitable conduct trial.

In addition to the manner in which Nilssen's patents were asserted and removed from the case, a number of issues relating to appellants' litigation conduct are germane to the present appeal. Before trial began, Osram requested a deposition of Lars Evensen, Nilssen's nephew and the lone officer of Geo Foundation. Appellants insisted that a deposition was unnecessary because Evensen had no relevant knowledge of Geo Foundation's financial practices. They argued that the expense and effort involved in appearing for a deposition in the United States would be an excessive burden on Evensen, who resided and worked in Norway. The court instructed the parties to reach a compromise on the issue, which they did, and Evensen's deposition was taken in Norway.

Both parties exchanged unverified (unsigned) responses to interrogatories before trial. Nilssen's July 9, 2003 responses contained several incorrect filing dates for the patents in suit. During one of Nilssen's depositions, his attorney informed Osram that some of the filing dates in Nilssen's response were incorrect and indicated, in a hand-written note, the mistakes that he could recall from memory. At trial, Osram sought to impeach Nilssen using his original interrogatory responses, to which appellants objected, arguing that the responses had been corrected at Nilssen's deposition and that the interrogatories had no legal effect as they were not signed by Nilssen. The district court ruled that the responses constituted admissions that were admissible at trial.

At trial, Nilssen claimed that he had relied on his tax counsel in determining that the Geo Foundation was eligible to pay small entity maintenance fees on the patents at issue; Geo Foundation's right to make small entity payments was an important element of the inequitable conduct trial. Osram argued that such reliance amounted to waiver of his attorney-client privilege without proper notice. The district court accordingly allowed Osram to conduct a new deposition of Nilssen's attorney during the time of the trial. Toward the end of the trial, appellants produced a number of documents, several of which related to reimbursements made to Nilssen's attorneys. Osram objected to the inclusion of those documents in evidence due to their untimeliness. The judge declined to rule on the admission of the new documents until Osram had the opportunity to review them, but promised to listen to any objection Osram might bring in the future regarding the admission of the documents.

At the conclusion of the trial, on July 5, 2006, the district court found that Nilssen had engaged in inequitable conduct, thus rendering unenforceable the eleven patents at issue. Nilssen, 440 F.Supp.2d at 911. The inequitable conduct found by the court included misclaiming small entity status and improperly paying small entity maintenance fees, failing to disclose related litigation, misclaiming the priority of earlier filing dates, withholding material prior art, and submitting misleading affidavits to the Patent and Trademark Office. Id. at 901-11. On appeal, we affirmed that decision.

After the inequitable conduct trial, Osram filed, inter alia, a motion for reimbursement of attorney fees. Appellants responded with a motion to recover expert deposition fees. The court denied the motion for expert deposition fees, finding that awarding such fees to Nilssen would be a "manifest injustice." Nilssen, 2007 WL 257711, at *7, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5792, at *23. The district court granted Osram's motion for attorney fees, finding that the case was exceptional. Id. The court noted three reasons for finding exceptionality: Nilssen's inequitable conduct, the frivolous nature of the lawsuit, and appellants' litigation misconduct. Id., 2007 WL 257711, at **8-10, 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5792, at **26-31. The court found that the lawsuit was frivolous because Nilssen "knew or should have known" that the suit was baseless. Id. 2007 WL 257711 at *9, 2007 LEXIS 5792, at *29. In support of the finding of litigation misconduct, the court noted appellants' refusal to allow Evensen's deposition in the United States, the late withdrawal of fifteen of the patents in suit, the belatedly-produced documents, and Nilssen's last minute waiver of the attorney-client privilege....