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 along with the supplier of the accused product. This type of lawsuit establishes a close connection between the defendants in that the accused product is the same across all the defendants, which likely is a permissible joinder under the new standards set forth in the America Invents Act.
Nonetheless, this new tactic is having limited success. In a recent patent infringement action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the plaintiff sued several customers and the supplier of an accused product. The defendants moved to sever the customer defendants from the supplier defendant and to stay the action against the customer defendant. The supplier defendant also moved to transfer the severed action against it to the Northern District of California where it was based. It also asserted that transfer was appropriate because the plaintiff was based in Southern California, much closer to the Northern District of California than the Northern District of Illinois.
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