In three patent cases brought by the same plaintiff, Raylon LLC, against numerous defendants, Judge Davis of the Eastern District of Texas denied Rule 11 sanctions and motions for attorneys’ fees under Section 285 of the Patent Statute, and Section 1927 of Title 28. Following the grant of summary judgment…
The plaintiff sued over 500 defendants for patent infringement in multiple actions in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The patent-at-issue claims a “‘software interface’ that may provide a ‘map of a selected geographic area’ such that ‘information which is associated with particular geographic locations,’…
In the wake of the new restrictions on joinder of multiple defendants after the enactment of the America Invents Act, a number of plaintiffs have still attempted to join multiple defendants in a single lawsuit. One tactic used by plaintiffs is to file suit against several customers of a supplier…
In a ruling that is likely to become more and more common after the passage of the America Invents Act, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed all but one of the defendants in a patent infringement action for improper joinder. In February 2010, the…
Plaintiff filed a patent infringement suit against 17 defendants alleging direct, indirect and joint infringement. The defendants moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The district court granted the motions to dismiss the joint infringement and indirect infringement claims, but denied the motions to dismiss the direct infringement…
A Delaware Court again recently denied transfer from Delaware to the Northern District of California despite that (a) all of the accused infringers were headquartered in the transferee venue, (b) the party witnesses knowledgeable about the accused products and documents related to the accused products were there and (c) the…
One of the district courts in the Eastern District of Texas has issued several orders in multi-defendant patent infringement cases addressing whether changes to the court’s normal scheduling orders were necessary. The district court has previously expressed concern in several cases that defendants may be faced with a Hobson’s choice…
In yet another multi-defendant case, a district court has severed defendants from a patent infringement suit brought by a plaintiff against many defendants. In this case, the plaintiff brought suit against eleven defendants for infringing the same four patents. The district court granted defendants’ motion to sever because the plaintiff…
The multitude of multiple defendants in patent infringement suits continue to increase on a daily basis. But some district courts are putting a stop to the practice, at least in certain circumstances, by severing defendants that are misjoined. In a recent case in the Central District of California, the court…