District Court Denies Apple’s Request to Add Acacia into Patent Infringement Lawsuit as Alter Ego of Plaintiff

In this patent infringement action, Apple filed a motion to add additional Acacia entities as plaintiffs in the action. Apple’s primary argue was that the Acacia entities were the alter egos of the plaintiff and that the plaintiff is undercapitalized, which would mean that Apple might be unable to collect attorney’s fees and costs it might be awarded against the plaintiff at the end of the litigation.

The plaintiff opposed the motion on the ground that it was not undercapitalized and that the Apple motion was premature, particularly since Apple had not yet obtained any award. The district court agreed.

First, the district court found that “Plaintiff has persuasively responded that it is not undercapitalized.”

Second, the district court ruled that the motion was premature as Apple had “not obtained any award of fees and costs in this matter, let alone shown that Plaintiff cannot pay the award.”

Accordingly, the district court held that Apple could seek recovery “against the Acacia entities when and if such events occur. It would needlessly complicate these proceedings to join the Acacia entities at this juncture.”

Parthenon Unified Memory Architecture LLC v. Apple, Inc., Case No. 2:15-CV-621-JRG-RSP (E.D. Tex. Aug. 2016)

The authors of www.PatentLawyerBlog.com are patent trial lawyers at Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP. For more information about this case, contact Stan Gibson at 310.201.3548 or SGibson@jmbm.com.