Joy Technologies, Inc., Plaintiff-appellee,anda/s Niro Atomizer, Involuntary-plaintiff, v. Flakt, Inc., Defendant-appellant, 60 F.3d 843 (Fed. Cir. 1995)

Flakt, Inc. (Flakt) appeals from the judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware and from the order of the district court denying Flakt's motion for judgment as a matter of law and alternative motion for a new trial. We affirm.

DISCUSSION

United States Patent No. 4,279,873 ('873 patent), which issued in 1981, claims an improvement to the prior art dry flue gas desulfurization (FGD) processes by recycling the fly ash removed from the flue gas into the suspension, which is then reintroduced into the spray dryer.¹  As this process repeats, the recycled particles gain greater surface areas on which the reaction (and thus desulfurization) may occur during the FGD process, thereby increasing efficiency.

On September 28, 1989, Joy Technologies, Inc. (Joy) sued Flakt for infringement of the '873 patent in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. In a bifurcated proceeding, the parties tried the liability case before a jury over fourteen days during December and January of 1992. The jury found, inter alia, that all of the claims asserted by Joy were infringed, both literally and under the doctrine of equivalents, and that Flakt had failed to prove invalidity.² 

After trial, Flack renewed its motion for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) under Rule 50(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or for a new trial under Rule 59. On March 31, 1993, the district court issued a Memorandum Opinion denying these motions. Thereafter, Flakt appealed the judgment, arguing that the jury's determination of literal infringement and infringement under the doctrine of equivalents is unsupported by substantial evidence and that the '873 patent is invalid.³ 

On appeal, in reviewing the denial of a motion for JMOL, this court applies the standards for JMOL anew. Read Corp. v. Portec, Inc., 970 F.2d 816, 821, 23 USPQ2D 1426, 1431 (Fed. Cir. 1992). Accordingly, the appellant must show either (1) that the jury's factual findings are not supported by substantial evidence or (2) that the legal conclusion implied from the jury's verdict cannot be supported by those findings. Perkin-Elmer Corp. v. Computervision Corp., 732 F.2d 888, 893, 221 USPQ 669, 673 (Fed. Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 857 (1984); Dana Corp. v. IPC Ltd. Partnership, 860 F.2d 415, 417, 8 USPQ2d 1692, 1694 (Fed. Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1067 (1989).

The '873 patent discloses that the claimed FGD process requires the maintenance of a flue gas temperature at about 8 to 40 degrees Centigrade above the saturation temperature of the flue gas. To achieve the required temperature, claim 1 of the patent directs that "the amount of said suspension and the water content thereof be [ ] adjusted to obtain [the specified] temperature," and independent claim 2 similarly requires "maintaining the temperature of the flue gas effluent from said drying chamber ... by controlling the amount of feed suspension ... and the total solids content of said feed suspension."

Flakt argues that claim 1 requires the "adjustment" of the suspension and water and claim 2 requires the "control" of the suspension and solid but that the accused systems are distinguishable from the claims at issue because these systems only allow the adjustment or control of the amount of suspension.

In its Memorandum Opinion, the district court noted that one of Flakt's engineers (Mr. Fiedler) conceded that the amount of solids and water are both adjusted and controlled in order to change the amount of suspension when the accused systems react to temperature fluctuations. Another one of Flakt's engineers (Mr. Buschmann) also confirmed that the accused systems required the adjustment and control of the solid content of the suspension following periodic inspections. Based in part on the testimony of Flakt's witnesses, the district court noted that, when the accused systems made adjustments in the amounts of the suspension, any such change effected a corresponding change in the amount of both solids and water. The court also pointed out that Flakt's own operations manual instructed that water and solids are added to the FGD system as determined by system operating parameters, including temperature. For these reasons, the district court found that substantial evidence existed to support the jury verdict.

We must accept a jury verdict of infringement, an ultimate issue of fact, if "reasonable jurors viewing the evidence as a whole could have found the facts needed to support the verdict in light of the applicable law." Kearns v. Chrysler Corp., 32 F.3d 1541, 1548, 31 USPQ2d 1746, 1756 (Fed. Cir. 1994). As the district court explained, the testimony and other evidence at trial demonstrated that any change in suspension would effect a corresponding change in the amount of solids as well as water. Findings to this effect satisfy the elements of the claims literally. Because substantial evidence supported the jury's verdict, we have no basis for overturning that verdict or the decision of the district court in denying the motion for JMOL. We, therefore, affirm the finding of literal infringement, which makes it unnecessary to consider the jury's finding of infringement under the doctrine of equivalents. Transmatic, Inc. v. Gulton Indus., 53 F.3d 1270, 1275 (Fed. Cir. 1995).

We have also considered Flakt's other arguments, including those relating to Joy's lack of standing and to the validity of the '873 patent, and find them unpersuasive on the record in this case.