The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals found that the district court judge had erred in reversing the jury’s invalidity finding and entering a judgment as a matter of law.
The court noted that a general jury verdict of invalidity should be upheld if there was sufficient evidence to support any of the alternative theories of invalidity. “A failure of proof with respect to any single item of evidence does not justify a grant of either judgment as a matter of law or a new trial; even if some of the proposed factual grounds … are not generally sufficient to support a verdict, that is not fatal, because the critical question is whether the evidence, taken as a whole, was sufficient to support the jury’s verdict.”
In the absence of any ruling on the sufficiency of the evidence on both theories presented to the jury on the contested patent claim, the district court had no basis to find the jury’s general verdict unsustainable on the written description theory alone. Thus, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals found that the judgment as a matter of law ruling on the written description was improper.
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