Case No. IP-2018-000199

Douglas McKay 18.Kwikbolt’s expert was Douglas McKay. Mr McKay worked in the aircraft manufacturing industry for 27 years from 1988 until his retirement in 2015. He held positions as an engineer successively in three Texan corporations, from 1998 in the aerospace industry, first at Vought Aircraft Industries Inc and from 2005 at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company. One of Mr McKay’s tasks at Lockheed was leading efforts to identify and develop a more suitable temporary fastener for use on F-35 wing assembly lines. 19.Mr Ward, counsel for Airbus, could not have been more approving of Mr McKay as a witness in cross-examination, describing him as a completely straightforward witness, very knowledgeable, doing his best to help the court. I agree. The sting in the tail of Mr Ward’s submission was that by contrast Mr McKay’s reports were full of factual inaccuracies, some corrected after the relevant report had been sworn and others not, and that Mr McKay had in cross-examination abandoned every important proposition made in his report in relation to the Patent and the prior art. Mr Ward said that Mr McKay’s reports had been prepared in a way that did not reflect his honest views and should be treated with the highest degree of scepticism. Before commenting on this I will discuss Mr Jack’s evidence. Milton Jack 20.Milton Jack was Airbus’s expert. His career was spent mostly as an employee of The Boeing Company, working as an engineering technician. He began at Boeing in 1966 and retired from that company in 2002. There was a break from Boeing between 1970 and 1977, during which Mr Jack spent time at the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, North American Rockwell, the Northrop Corporation and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. After he retired as an employee, Mr Jack founded his own consulting company, OMT Inc (he said that it stood for Old Man’s Thoughts), through which he provided consultancy services to Boeing. Throughout his career Mr Jack worked with temporary and permanent fasteners used in the aerospace industry. 21.Mr Vanhegan’s submissions on Mr Jack as a witness mirrored those of Mr Ward on Mr McKay: he was a good witness in cross-examination doing his best to help the court, but his report was not satisfactory. Each legal team was, by implication, accusing the other of having an overbearing influence on its expert. 22.I agree in full with the commendation of both Mr McKay’s and Mr Jack’s conduct in cross-examination. Both experts gave honest and helpful evidence. However, I think it is possible that the preparation of each of their respective reports was steered by the relevant legal team with an excessively firm hand on the wheel. More than is usual, the evidence given in cross-examination by the experts was likely to be more reliable than that given in a report.