In Sargon Enterprises, Inc. v. University of Southern California (2012) 55 Cal.4th 747, the manufacturer of a novel dental implant brought an action for breach of contract against a university with which it contracted to perform clinical testing of the device. In support of the manufacturer's claim for lost profits, an expert testified that the small manufacturer, which had annual net profits of $101,000, would have become a worldwide leader in the dental implant industry and would have earned profits ranging from $200 million to $1 billion if the university had not breached its contract. The trial court excluded that expert's opinion as speculative and unreliable, and the Supreme Court affirmed that ruling. The expert's market share approach to computing lost profits was based upon a comparison of Sargon to six large, multinational dental implant companies that were the dominant market leaders in the industry. (Sargon, supra, 55 Cal.4th at p. 756.) Sargon had no meaningful marketing or research and development organization, and no parent company to assist it. The expert testified that the product was so innovative and superior that within 10 years Sargon would have become the market leader. (Id. at p. 757.) He acknowledged that he had no expertise in the dental implant field or in determining how innovative Sargon's device was, and that the damages calculation depended on the innovativeness of the product, as well as his assumption that the market share of each of the six comparator companies reflected its degree of innovativeness. The trial court deemed inadmissible the expert's testimony, finding "'to the extent that this ranking of "innovativeness," ... rests on the fact that some dental implant companies have larger market shares, it rests on nothing more than a tautology. As there is no evidentiary basis that equates the degree of innovativeness with the degree of difference in market share, the question posed to the jury--to rank innovativeness and assign a market share, the sine qua non of the expert's opinion--has no rational basis.'" (Id. at pp. 763-764.) The expert testified that if there had been no breach of contract, Sargon would have gone from a three-person operation to sharing industry leadership with a multimillion dollar international corporation, and would have done so in part by investing in research and development that would have produced new products. (Id. at pp. 765-766.) The trial court found this to be "'absolutely devoid of any factual basis about an industry where he has no expertise.'" (Id. at p. 766.) After the Court of Appeal reversed the trial court's ruling, the Supreme Court granted review and found that the trial court had not erred in excluding the expert's testimony. The high court concluded, "An accountant might be able to determine with reasonable precision what Sargon's profits would have been if it had achieved a market share comparable to one of the 'Big Six.' The problem here, however, is that the expert's testimony provided no logical basis to infer that Sargon would have achieved that market share. The lack of sound methodology in the expert's testimony for determining what the future would have brought supported the trial court's ruling." (Sargon, supra, 55 Cal.4th at p. 781.) The court observed, "The trial court's preliminary determination whether the expert opinion is founded on sound logic is not a decision on its persuasiveness. The court must not weigh an opinion's probative value or substitute its own opinion for the expert's opinion. Rather, the court must simply determine whether the matter relied on can provide a reasonable basis for the opinion or whether that opinion is based on a leap of logic or conjecture. The court does not resolve scientific controversies. Rather, it conducts a 'circumscribed inquiry' to 'determine whether, as a matter of logic, the studies and other information cited by experts adequately support the conclusion that the expert's general theory or technique is valid.' The goal of trial court gatekeeping is simply to exclude 'clearly invalid and unreliable' expert opinion. " (Sargon, supra, 55 Cal.4th at p. 772.)