Woodland Trust v. Flowertree Nursery, Inc.

Flowertree (defendant), sued by Woodland (plaintiff) for infringing a patent on a method for preventing ground- plant freezing, argued the patent was invalid because its own owners had known and used the same method many years before Woodland's filing date; Flowertree presented numerous witnesses testifying to this decades-old prior use, and Woodland countered with its own witnesses. The district court, reasoning the many witnesses weren't perjuring themselves, found the invention anticipated and the patent invalid.

Whether, in order to show prior use of a patented invention, it is sufficient to provide testimony evidence of events many decades old and provided by interested witnesses.