Jiaxing Super Lighting Electric Appliance, Co., Ltd., et al. v. CH Lighting Technology Co., Ltd., et al., No. 2023-1715 (Fed. Cir. (W.D. Tex.) July 28, 2025). Opinion by Dyk, joined by Chen and Hughes.
Super Lighting sued CH Lighting for infringement of three patents related to LED tube lamps. Before trial, CH Lighting conceded infringement of two of the patents. At trial, the district court excluded CH Lighting’s evidence relating to whether prior art devices were on sale before those two patents. Without that evidence, the district court awarded Super Lighting judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) that those two patents were not invalid. A jury then found the third patent infringed and not invalid, and awarded Super Lighting damages for infringement of all three patents. CH Lighting appealed.
First, the Federal Circuit reversed the district court’s exclusion of CH Lighting’s evidence that certain prior art devices were on sale before the patents’ filing dates. The expected evidence included testimony from a third party authenticating prior art documents showing that the prior art was on sale before the patents’ effective filing dates. The district court prevented the testimony because CH Lighting substituted the witness who would provide the testimony due to a scheduling conflict. In ruling that the district court abused its discretion, the Federal Circuit explained that there was no “rule or order requiring parties to identify in advance which witnesses would authenticate documents.”
CH Lighting’s expected evidence also included a presentation showing that Super Lighting had acquired the prior art LED tube lamps before the patents’ filing dates. The district court excluded that evidence because it related not to invalidity but to CH Lighting’s inequitable conduct theory, which was no longer part of the case. In reversing the district court, the Federal Circuit explained that the presentation was referenced in CH Lighting’s invalidity expert report for invalidity purposes, not just for inequitable conduct.
Second, the Federal Circuit affirmed the jury’s finding of infringement and no invalidity as to the third patent. The court explained that the “jury was free to credit [Super Lighting’s expert] testimony,” and thus substantial evidence supported the jury’s findings.
Finally, the Federal Circuit vacated the damages award because of its reversal of the district court’s grant of JMOL related to invalidity. In doing so, the court noted that before denying CH Lighting’s Daubert motion on the reliability of Super Lighting’s damages expert’s opinion, the district court “should have conducted a more exacting analysis of [the damages expert’s] testimony.”
The Federal Circuit instructed the district court on remand to “consider the reliability of [the damages expert’s] testimony in light of [the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision in] EcoFactor,” and specifically “to consider whether Super Lighting properly apportioned damages.” The court reminded that “expert testimony should be excluded when it fails to allocate license fees among the licensed patents covered by an agreement.” And the court added that “if there is a problem with [the expert’s] damages testimony, her testimony cannot be justified simply because she made a series of blanket upward and downward adjustments based on such factors as the level of competition between the parties and changes in the price of LED tubes.”
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FMC Corp. v. Sharda USA, LLC, No. 2024-2335 (Fed. Cir. (E.D. Penn.) Aug. 1, 2025). Opinion by Chen, joined by Moore and Barnett (sitting by designation).
FMC owns two patents directed to insecticides and miticides. FMC accused Sharda’s insecticide product of infringement and moved for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction. Although the court initially denied FMC’s motion, the court ultimately granted a preliminary injunction after construing the claim term “composition” as limited to “stable compositions, rather than the well-known unstable compositions that produce ineffective results as discussed throughout the prosecution history.” In reaching the construction requiring stable compositions, the court relied on disclosures stressing stability in both the patent’s provisional application and a related patent.
Applying that construction and entering the preliminary injunction, the district court rejected Sharda’s anticipation and obviousness defenses because Sharda’s prior art reference “disclosed only unstable compositions.” Sharda appealed.
The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded. The court explained that although the provisional application and related patent contain various teachings about stability and stable compositions, the common specification of the two asserted patents omits every such disclosure. The Federal Circuit thus agreed with Sharda that the district court “impermissibly grafted a stability requirement onto ‘composition’ as used in the claims of the asserted patents.”
The Federal Circuit noted that “[i]t is true we typically interpret a claim term consistently across a patent family when the patents derive from the same parent application.” “But that principle does not hold true when the patent owner, like FMC here, materially alters the specification of some of the members of the patent family in a manner that directs a skilled artisan to interpret the claim term differently.”
The Federal Circuit thus ruled that the term “composition” should have its plain and ordinary meaning. Under that construction, the Federal Circuit vacated the district court’s anticipation finding and obviousness determination, and remanded for the district court to reconsider whether Sharda raised a substantial question on anticipation or obviousness.
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