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District Court Denied Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction Where Defendant Failed to Submit Any Evidence and Merely Relied upon Allegations of Complaint

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    • In this patent infringement action, the defendants, Synergistics, Inc. (“Synergistics”), filed a motion to dismiss the complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction. The plaintiff, Parabit Systems, Inc. (“Parabit”), opposed the motion on the ground that it was not required to establish personal jurisdiction in the complaint and that Synergistics had failed to come forward with any evidence that the district court did not have personal jurisdiction over it.

    The district court agreed with Parabit, noting that a plaintiff does not have plead allegations pertaining to personal jurisdiction in the complaint. “The motion is mainly focused on the adequacy of allegations of personal jurisdiction in the complaint, but plaintiff has no obligation under Rule 8 to plead any allegations pertaining to personal jurisdiction, and so a complaint cannot inadequately allege the basis for personal jurisdiction.”

    The district court also determined that Synergistics had not set forth any facts in any evidentiary form to switch the burden of proving personal jurisdiction to Parabit: “defendants have merely made allegations in their brief, but have submitted no affidavits or other evidence to support those statements. Although plaintiff has the burden of proving personal jurisdiction when it is properly challenged, defendants had the burden of going forward to show at least a colorable basis for challenging personal jurisdiction, and unsupported statements in a brief do not do that.”

    As a result, the district court denied the motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction.

    Parabit Systems, Inc. v. Synergistics, Inc. et al., Case No. 2-19-CV-00888 (E.D.N.Y. April 5, 2019)

    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.

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