As part of the Hatch-Waxman Act, given the lack of information on the allegedly infringing product, courts have found that patentees can satisfy the pleading requirements of Twombly/Iqbal without having access to the accused...more
In Part I of this series, we discussed institutional bad faith and best practices for insurers to minimize the risk of these costly and intrusive lawsuits. In Part II, we will focus on cutting discovery off at the...more
A recent District Court decision serves as a reminder to both Plaintiffs and Defendants to properly scrutinize a complaint for well-pleaded factual allegations. In Walker v. Lyons, Doughty & Veldhuis, P.C., et. al, No....more
The Situation: Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 84, which permitted U.S. patent-infringement lawsuits to proceed on very general allegations, was withdrawn three years ago. Subsequent court decisions have considered how much...more
Addressing the minimum pleading requirements of Twombly and Iqbal, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a district court’s finding that a plaintiff’s eight-page complaint failed to state a claim on which...more
Federal Circuit Summaries - Before Reyna, Wallach, and Stoll. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. Summary: A complaint that attaches the asserted patents, specifically...more
After having its complaint for patent infringement dismissed for failure to state a claim and being denied its request to file an amended complaint in the Middle District of Georgia, Disc Disease Solutions turned to the...more
Editor's Overview - As we have observed on other occasions, the ERISA class action plaintiffs' bar has, for several years now, honed in on 401(k) plan fiduciaries and their decisions to select and retain investment options...more
The District of Massachusetts recently grappled with the proper analytical standard when faced with a Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss in a patent infringement case. Judge Burroughs held that the familiar...more
In a November 21, 2016, order, the Honorable Janis L. Sammartino of the Southern District of California dismissed The Scripps Research Institute’s (TSRI) patent infringement claims without prejudice because TSRI failed to...more
Addressing the pleading standard under which a joint patent infringement claim must be reviewed, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a complaint of patent infringement, finding that the...more
Can an insurer be potentially liable for breach of contract or bad faith where the insured can only plead a plausible claim of damages? The Ninth Circuit has answered “yes” in a recent decision in the case of Beverly Burton...more
Earlier this year, we discussed the potential ramifications of the December 2015 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on the pleading standard of infringement following the decision in Rembrandt Patent...more
On September 30, 2016, the Federal Circuit issued an opinion affirming the District Court for the Southern District of New York’s dismissal of the plaintiff ’s complaint under Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) because the complaint...more
It has been a little more than half a year since the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure abrogated Rule 84 and put an end to the Form 18 bare-bones style patent complaint. The question on the minds of many...more
Shearman & Sterling’s IP litigation team has published its quarterly newsletter. The newsletter covers a number of current IP topics, including a look at the America Invents Act, five years in; the U.S. International Trade...more
This month, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania issued an opinion that reminds insurance carriers and their counsel that it is often beneficial to remove certain cases to federal court. While federal court offers many...more
Last month, the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California ruled that the Federal Circuit’s somewhat bare pleading standard for direct patent infringement is no longer sufficient following recent amendments to...more
In Biro v. Condé Nast, et al., the Second Circuit recently determined that, in a defamation action, limited-purpose public figures must plead in a “plausible way” that the defendants acted with actual malice, citing Federal...more
On December 1, 2015, changes recommended by the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and adopted by the Supreme Court will take effect. Among these changes is elimination of the...more
Addressing pleading requirements for direct and indirect infringement, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court’s determination that although pre-filing notice is not required to bring suit...more
In an order issued in late April of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, adopted changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that were approved in September by the Judicial Conference of the United States....more
Rejecting the "punctiliously stated 'theory of pleading'" applied by the district court and the Fifth Circuit, the U.S. Supreme Court in Johnson v. City of Shelby, Mississippi, ___ S.Ct. ___, 2014 WL 5798626 (2014), held that...more
Merus B.V. moved for dismissal, arguing the Federal Circuit created an “off-ramp” for patent cases by holding in K-Tech Telecomms., Inc. v. Time Warner Cable, Inc., 714 F.3d 1277 (Fed. Cir. 2013), that when the principles set...more
The Supreme Court, in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007), and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009), has in recent years focused the requirements for pleadings under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure...more