This is a patent case. It is not unusual for a patent case on appeal to turn more on a question of law or legal procedure than on the complexities of the particular technology that underlies the dispute. This is not such a case. This case has both legal issues and technical issues in roughly equal measure. There is, among other issues, a complex, though ultimately not difficult, question of allocation of the burdens of proof between the patentee and the alleged infringer when entitlement to an earlier filing date is at issue. And there is, among other issues, a complex, and rather difficult, question of whether the written description of the earlier application supports the later-claimed technology. As the reader will see, in the course of deciding the case the court had to parse the terms of the four applications that led to the two patents governing the particular aspect of video technology at issue.
After weighing carefully the findings and judgment of the trial court, which followed from a lengthy bench trial, and the arguments of counsel for the parties regarding the several issues in contention, we affirm the trial court’s judgment.
