The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has reaffirmed the exacting standard for preserving challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence for appeal. Junker v. Eddings, Case Nos. 04-1208, -1271 (Fed. Cir., Feb. 8, 2005) (Newman, J.). The Court also held that the district court may not award attorney fees in excess of those actually incurred without detailing its reasons for doing so.
Junker, an inventor and a salesman of medical devices, obtained a design patent on a propeller-shaped design for an introducer sheath. At trial, a Texas jury found the defendants liable for willful infringement. The defendants appealed, challenging the jury’s verdict on a factual grounds not argued to the jury or squarely presented in a judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) motion at the close of all evidence. The Federal Circuit declined to entertain the new argument, pointing out that Rule 50(a) provides that a motion for JMOL made before the case is submitted to the jury "shall specify . . . the facts on which the moving party is entitled to the judgment" in order to give the non-moving party an opportunity to cure the defects in proof and to inform the trial court of the precise issues it must decide in ruling on the motion.
According to the Court, the general statements in the defendants’ original JMOL motion were not adequate to inform either Junker or the district court that the defendants’ challenges to the validity of the design patent involved certain specific elements of the design later asserted as a basis for the appeal.
The district court also awarded Junker attorney fees of $275,000 under 35 U.S.C. § 285. This amount was almost double the $126,712.50 Junker’s attorney actually charged Junker. The Court noted that the kind of evidence usually analyzed in determining a reasonable attorney fee ("hourly time records, full expense statements, documentation of attorney hourly billing rates in the community for the particular type of work involved, the attorney’s particular skills and experience, and detailed billing records or client’s actual bills showing tasks performed in connection with the litigation") was "[c]onspicuously absent" from the district court’s fee award order. Lacking a record upon which to base its review, the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded the fee award.
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