On-sale bar jury instruction was not erroneous
Laboratory Skin Care, Inc. and Zahra Mansouri v. Limited Brands, Inc. and Bath And Body Works, LLC, Civil Action No. 06-601-LPS, September 8, 2011.
Stark, J. Plaintiff’s renewed motion for judgment as a matter of law or for new trial is denied.
A three day jury trial ended in this patent case on Marcy 31, 2011. The patent-in-suit, U.S. Patent No. 6,579,516 is directed to hand lotion products. The jury returned a verdict finding that defendants infringed some claims of the ‘516 patent, and found other claim invalid under the on-sale bar of 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). Plaintiff’s motion for judgment as a matter of law and for new trial on the issues of insufficient evidence of a barring sale, erroneous on-sale bar jury instructions; and exert testimony beyond the scope of the report was denied. Substantial evidence supported the on-sale bar finding. Use of the word “product” and not “embodiment of the claimed invention” did not render the jury instruction erroneous. Further, the supposed error was harmless because the jury had sufficient evidence from which to draw its conclusion that the product met each and every limitation of the invalidated claims. Finally, the expert’s testimony was not unduly prejudicial even if it exceeded the scope of the report.
