On Friday, Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald presiding in the Southern District of New York granted Monsanto's motion to dismiss a case brought by the Public Patent Foundation (PubPat) on behalf of "farmers and seed businesses, both organic and non-organic, as well as related membership organizations."  Organic Seed Growers and Trade Assn. et al. v. Monsanto Co.  This puts to an end (for now) PubPat's latest effort to influence U.S. patent policy through the courts (the other instance being, most (in)famously, Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office ("the Myriad case"), although here PubPat was not aided by the American Civil Liberties Union).  The complaint named almost seventy plaintiffs, and the patents at issue were U.S. Patent Nos. 5,322,938 (expired 6/21/2011), 5,532,605 (expired 7/28/2008), 5,362,865 (expired 11/8/2011), 5,378,619 (expired 1/3/2012), 5,424,412 (will expire 6/13/2012), 5,463,175 (will expire 10/31/2012), 5,530,196, 5,554,798, 5,593,874, 5,641,876, 5,659,122, 5,717,084, 5,728,925, 5,750,871, 5,859,347, 6,025,545, 6,040,497, 6,051,753, 6,083,878, 6,753,463, and 6,825,400, and U.S. Reissue Patent Nos. RE38825 and RE39247.

Monsanto asked the Court to dismiss the action for failure to allege a "case or controversy" under the Declaratory Judgments Act as required under Article III of the Constitution.  The District Court began its opinion granting this motion by noting that a court's jurisdiction cannot exceed this Article III requirement under the Declaratory Judgment Act, citing Prasco, LLC v. Medicis Pharm. Corp., 537 F.3d 1329, 1335 (Fed. Cir. 2008).  The Supreme Court's test for determining whether a sufficient case or controversy has been plead requires a plaintiff to establish that "the facts alleged, under all the circumstances, show that there is a substantial controversy, between parties having adverse legal interests, of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment," citing (without apparent irony) Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent & Trademark Office ("AMP"), 653 F.3d 1329, 1342-43 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (quoting MedImmune, Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., 549 U.S. 118, 127 (2007)).  The Court noted that this test has been "refined" by the Federal Circuit to require "an injury in fact traceable to the patentee," which only exists if plaintiffs have alleged "both (1) an affirmative act by the patentee related to the enforcement of his patent rights, and (2) meaningful preparation to conduct potentially infringing activity."  Id. at 1343 (citing SanDisk Corp. v. STMicroelectronics, Inc., 480 F.3d 1372, 1380-81 (Fed. Cir. 2007).

The opinion notes (in footnote 5) that...

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