By Joel Leeman. A member of our Litigation Practice Group
The Federal Circuit, the appeals court for all patent litigations, has given its blessing to the no-frills complaint that has become standard in infringement lawsuits. The court bucks recent judicial trends of mandating more detailed pleadings in support of claims for relief.
Patent litigation, for all its knotty complexities and notoriously high cost, is typically launched with a complaint of surprising spareness. The patent owner need only say he owns a specific patent and that the defendant is infringing it by making, selling and/or using a device or method that practices the patent.
Indeed, an appendix to the rules of civil procedure includes a sampler of complaints for a dozen different situations, all intended, in the words of Rule 84, to “illustrate the simplicity and brevity that these rules contemplate.” Form 18 is a complaint for patent infringement laid out in a mere four paragraphs.
Sometimes, parties on the receiving end of an infringement complaint feel frustration when the lack of detail leaves them wondering how precisely they are thought to be infringing. Two such defendants, Time Warner and DirecTV, persuaded a federal judge in Los Angeles to dismiss an infringement complaint from K-Tech Telecommunications for failure to state a claim.
It’s not enough, said the judge, that K-Tech thinks the defendants “must” be infringing. Even though the complaint met the bare-bones criteria of Form 18, the judge faulted K-Tech for not explaining why it believed the two defendants were practicing K-Tech’s patented method rather than some alternative method that did not infringe.
In K-Tech Telecommunications v. Time Warner Cable, the Federal Circuit stood up for traditional modes of pleading, holding that the law does not require a patent owner to identify the devices or methods that are believed to be infringing. It follows that a plaintiff need not exclude the possibility that the defendant is using a noninfringing alternative. (More)
Patent litigation, for all its knotty complexities and notoriously high cost, is typically launched with a complaint of surprising spareness. The patent owner need only say he owns a specific patent and that the defendant is infringing it by making, selling and/or using a device or method that practices the patent.
Indeed, an appendix to the rules of civil procedure includes a sampler of complaints for a dozen different situations, all intended, in the words of Rule 84, to “illustrate the simplicity and brevity that these rules contemplate.” Form 18 is a complaint for patent infringement laid out in a mere four paragraphs.
Sometimes, parties on the receiving end of an infringement complaint feel frustration when the lack of detail leaves them wondering how precisely they are thought to be infringing. Two such defendants, Time Warner and DirecTV, persuaded a federal judge in Los Angeles to dismiss an infringement complaint from K-Tech Telecommunications for failure to state a claim.
It’s not enough, said the judge, that K-Tech thinks the defendants “must” be infringing. Even though the complaint met the bare-bones criteria of Form 18, the judge faulted K-Tech for not explaining why it believed the two defendants were practicing K-Tech’s patented method rather than some alternative method that did not infringe.
In K-Tech Telecommunications v. Time Warner Cable, the Federal Circuit stood up for traditional modes of pleading, holding that the law does not require a patent owner to identify the devices or methods that are believed to be infringing. It follows that a plaintiff need not exclude the possibility that the defendant is using a noninfringing alternative. (More)
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