Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Org. v. Buffalo Tech. Inc.

On appeal, we affirm the district court’s summary judgment rulings in all but one respect. With respect to the issue of validity, we uphold the court’s entry of summary judgment that the ’069 patent was not anticipated. We also uphold the district court’s entry of summary judgment that the ’069 patent was not invalid because of the addition of new matter to the application or because the asserted claims lacked a sufficient written description in the original specification. With respect to the issue of obviousness, however, we conclude that the district court erred by entering summary judgment against Buffalo because we hold that there was a disputed issue of material fact as to whether the prior art references that were before the district court were combinable in a manner that would have rendered the asserted claims of the ’069 patent obvious. Although we vacate the summary judgment of obviousness, we have nonetheless addressed the issue of infringement, on which the district court entered summary judgment against Buffalo, because that issue will continue to be important to the ultimate disposition of the case unless the claims are held to be invalid for obviousness. As to that issue, we uphold the district court’s summary judgment of infringement.

Download