Articles Posted in District Courts

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Plaintiff AlmondNet, Inc. filed a patent infringement action against Microsoft Corporation based on four patents pertaining to Internet advertising. Microsoft filed several affirmative defenses and counterclaims against AlmondNet, including a defense and counterclaim that AlmondNet engaged in inequitable conduct before the PTO by failing to disclose three articles related to Internet advertising and three existing Internet advertising systems. AlmondNet moved to dismiss the inequitable conduct counterclaim and the district court granted the motion with leave to amend to plead inequitable conduct with particularity.

Microsoft subsequently amended its answer and counterclaim and AlmondNet moved to strike the inequitable conduct defense and to dismiss Microsoft’s counterclaim for inequitable conduct. The district court determined that Microsoft’s amended pleading was sufficient and denied the motion.
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Plaintiff filed a patent infringement action against the defendant alleging that certain of defendant’s T-shirt transfer products infringed plaintiff’s patent. Defendant filed an answer and counterclaim which accused the plaintiff of inequitable conduct in amending its patent during a reissuance of the patent. Defendant claimed that plaintiff deliberately pursued a broadened reissue patent based on her learning of material faults in the patent after having had an opportunity to analyze defendant’s products and technology. Defendant’s primary contention was that the amendments made during the reissuance proceeding added new material to the patent.

As the district court wrote, “[a] reissue patent that enlarges the scope of the claims contained in an original patent shall not be granted unless it is applied for within two years of the grant of the original patent.” The reissue application for the patent-in-suit was filed more than two years after the issuance of the patent. Plaintiff moved to dismiss the inequitable conduct defense on the grounds that the facts alleged did not support a plausible inference that the plaintiff (1) made an affirmative misrepresentation of material fact or failed to disclose material information to the PTO during the reissue examination and (2) intended to deceive the PTO.
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Plaintiff Hurricane Shooters, LLC sought summary judgment of no invalidity on Defendant’s defenses of prior inventorship under Section 102(g) and lack of utility under Section 101. The patents-in-suit involve drinking cups for serving mixed drinks in bars and restaurants having a plural chamber that optimizes the mixing of fluids as they are simultaneously poured while minimizing interference with the nose of the drinker.

Defendant’s invalidity defense was based on a plural chamber “bomb cup” invented by a competitor. Rejecting Plaintiff’s evidence of an earlier date of invention in August 2004 consisting only of the uncorroborated inventor’s testimony, Plaintiff’s inventors’ evidence showed that they invented their plural chamber cup in November of 2004. Defendant, however, presented evidence that its plural chamber cup was invented in October 2004. The Hurricane Shooters court was faced with the issue of whether Defendant’s evidence of an earlier invention was sufficient to survive summary judgment.
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As the battle between Oracle and Google approaches nearer to trial, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California has denied Google’s objection to the selection of the pool of jurors who will hear the trial. The district court previously notified Oracle and Google that the district court intended to pre-clear a large number of potential jurors for a multi-month criminal trial and that it intended to use this same pool of potential jurors for the trial between Oracle and Google in the event the criminal trial was postponed. Oracle did not object to the procedure. Google did.

In its objection, Google argued that many potential jurors who would normally be available to serve on a three week trial would have significant personal or professional commitments that would prevent them from serving in a much longer criminal trial. As a result, Google reasoned that the pool cleared for the much longer criminal trial would be less diverse and less representative than a group specifically cleared for a shorter three week trial. In Google’s words, “[t]o maximize the size and diversity of the venire, enhance the [quality] of the jury-selection process, and increase the likelihood that the jury eventually selected will provide the parties with a fair cross section of the community, Google respectfully requests that the Court not use the pre-clearance process.”
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In this patent infringement suit, the parties were unable to agree upon a written Electronically Stored Information (“ESI”) protocol. Before the protocol was executed, the district court ordered the parties to comply with all scheduling orders and production deadliness regardless of whether they had agreed upon a final written agreement regarding the search and production of ESI. The parties subsequently disagreed over the scope of the document production and whether the document production was deficient.

After the district court intervened in the process of finalizing the written ESI protocol, the parties finally executed a written ESI protocol. A dispute then arose between the parties over the production of ESI according to the protocol and the plaintiff moved to compel.
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Abaxis, Inc. (“Abaxis”) filed a patent infringement action against Cepheid asserting that Cepheid infringed four of Abaxis’ patents. In its answer, Cepheid asserted a defense of inequitable conduct and Abaxis moved to dismiss the defense. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California granted the motion.

In support of the inequitable conduct defense, Cepheid alleged that the patent prosecutor knowingly and intentionally failed to disclose to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”) material prior art during the prosecution of the patents. Cepheid also explained that the undisclosed prior art anticipated and/or rendered the patents obvious and, therefore, the patents would not have issued had the prior art been before the PTO. Cepheid also alleged that the patent prosecutor made statements to the PTO during the patent prosecution to distinguish prior art cited by the by the PTO that were knowingly false in light of the information withheld from the PTO and “but for” these statements and the withholding of the material prior art the patents would not have issued.
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In a patent case filed in the Western District of Wisconsin, Defendant Digecor, Inc. moved to dismiss plaintiff Hunts Point Ventures, Inc.’s complaint for failing to identify the asserted claims or the accused product. In granting the Defendant’s motion, the Court (J. Crabb) reiterated her well established practice of requiring such information in a complaint absent the unusual circumstance where the patent contains only a single claim and the defendant makes only a single product.

Judge Crabb acknowledged that it previously has held that a plaintiff’s failure to identify the claims or the accused products “places an undue burden on the defendant, who must wade through all the claims in a patent and determine which claims might apply to its product to give a complete response.” Moreover, “if a defendant does not have notice of the asserted claims, it has not notice at all. If it does not know what it is accused of infringing , it cannot possibly prepare a defense.” Analogizing patent cases to civil rights cases, the Court succinctly explained that “it is the plaintiff’s initial burden to inform the defendant what it did to violate the plaintiff’s rights.”
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After the Federal Circuit’s decision in Thereasense, Inc. v. Becton, Dickinson and Co., 2011 WL 2028255 (Fed. Cir. 2011), it appeared likely that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to proceed on an inequitable conduct claim. A recent decision from the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey may change that trend.

Schering Corp. (“Schering”) filed a complaint alleging that Mylan Pharmaceuticals’ (“Mylan”) Abbreviated New Drug Application (“ANDA”) infringed two of Schering’s patents that disclosed different ways to reduce cholesterol levels. Schering filed motions for partial summary judgment, one of which sought to eliminate Mylan’s defense of inequitable conduct in light of Thereasense. After granting Schering’s motion for summary judgment on the issue of infringement, the district court examined the motion addressing the inequitable conduct defense.
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Plaintiff, Jan Voda, M.D. (“Dr. Voda”), filed a patent infringement action against Medtronic Inc. (“Medtronic”) based on a patent that taught how to use a guide catheter to perform angioplasty of the left coronary artery. After Dr. Voda filed an amended complaint adding an additional patent, Medtronic moved to dismiss the new count based on the new patent pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(b)(6) and attached documents that were not referred to in the complaint and that were not central to Dr. Voda’s claims. The district court issued an order notifying the parties that it would treat the motion as a motion for summary judgment under Fed.R.Civ.P. 56 and would consider the documents.

Medtronic’s motion argued that one of the counts of the amended complaint should be dismissed because the newly added patent was unenforceable in light of the Terminal Disclaimers. The Terminal Disclaimers stated that the ‘195 patent “shall be enforceable only for and during such period that it” is commonly owned with the ‘213 patent and another patent (the ‘625 patent),
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In a patent dispute over a method for detecting fetal Down syndrome, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts invalidated the patent owner’s patent because it was anticipated and obvious. The patent at issue describes screening methods to determine Down syndrome in which physicians estimate the risk of Down syndrome using markers from both the first and second trimesters of a pregnancy. The patent teaches determining the risk for fetal Down syndrome by combining markers from both stages of pregnancy into a single assessment of risk.

According to the district court opinion, after the patent was filed tests that integrate first and second-trimester data into a single calculation of risk were considered to have a higher detection rate than any test that used the data from only one of the trimesters. The testing disclosed by the patent is widely adopted and is licensed to a number of entities with thousands of assessments conducted under theses licenses each year.
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