The Saga Continues… Acushnet Files Motion and Brief Requesting Judgment as a Matter of Law Regarding the Invalidity of Callaway’s Patents, OR a New Trial
Last week’s post titled “Callaway Seeks Permanent Injunction… Is There A Risk That Titleist ProV1’s Will No Longer Be Available?” has obtained the distinction of being the most widely read Golf-Patents blog post of all time! Well, this one should beat it.
This post is not related to Callaway’s Motion for a permanent injunction; because Acushnet has not yet filed their response. Rather, this post is directed to Acushnet’s requests for “post-trial” relief.
Back on January 7th Acushnet filed a document entitled “Acushnet Company’s Motion for Post-Trial Relief.” (Click “As will be detailed in Acushnet’s supporting memorandum, the jury’s determination of the validity of those asserted claims is not supported by substantial record evidence and is legally unsound. Based on the evidence presented at trial, the jury could only have entered its verdict fully in Acushnet’s favor. No reasonable juror could find, for example, that secondary considerations demonstrate the asserted claims are valid, when, as here, each limitation is taught by the prior art and motivations to combine the references are provided repeatedly in the prior art references themselves. The Court should therefore enter judgment in favor of Acushnet on all questions of validity.”
“At a minimum, to prevent a miscarriage of justice, the validity of the claims found valid by jury [sic] should be retried.”
Basically the January 7th “Acushnet Company’s Motion for Post-Trial Relief” asserts that no reasonable jury could have come to the verdict that this particular jury came to, and it enumerates several alleged errors of the Court.
Now, this week Acushnet filed a brief in support of their January 7th motion. The brief is titled “Acushnet’s Opening Brief in Support of Its Motion for Post Trial Relief.” (Click After all, any brief that leads with the statement “Acushnet will show that the evidence adduced at trial can support only one legal conclusion – that all the claims-in-suit are obvious and invalid,” has a lot to prove.
While the Brief in Support included 6 exhibits, one exhibit in particular is very interesting (click /files/22847-21779/20080124_exhibit_4___blog.pdf”>these slides from Callaway’s opening statement at trial.
David Dawsey – The Golf Patent Lawyer
PS – Other posts regarding this lawsuit include:
a) General post
b) Post re Mickelson subpoena
c) Post re Greg Norman subpoena
d) Post re jury selection process
e) Post re proposed jury instructions
f) Post re proposed verdict form
g) Post re USPTO reexamination of one patent
h) Post re rulings on Motions for Summary Judgment
i) Post re Mickelson’s potential rebuttal testimony
j) Post re the verdict
k) Post re Callaway’s Motion for Permanent Injunction