All the briefs were not accessible, but looking through the Aventis brief, they are asking the court to dismiss the trial court's fact findings as clearly erronous. Given what you said about the competence of this judge, and given the fact that usually the standard here is if there is any evidence to support the trial judge's findings that the findings will stand, it seems to me more that this appeal is more in the nature of a delaying tactic than an appeal that they determine has a reasonable chance of succeeding.
The appellate court is not going to sit and review the fact de novo. They are going to look and see if there were any facts supporting the trial judge's decision, and if so, they are going to uphold.
Sounds like you are confident that the trial judge had no issues in misinterpreting the facts, dismissing the facts, ingoring evidence etc, as say, oh Judge Payne in Richmond, Virginia on Rambus's (RMBS) first patent trial. There was a case I witnessed of clear error, and one that could have been overturned, even with the jury finding, given how utterly biased the judge in that case was (didnt' help Rambus that Infineon was building a brand new DRAM manufacturing facility in Richmond at the time).
But if there was nothing like that taking place in this case, that is a very difficult ground to get the case overturned on appeal.
Tinker
