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Purported inventor who waited eight years to file suit could not overcome presumption of laches

By McKee, Voorhees & Sease, P.L.C.

In a decision yesterday, the Federal Circuit upheld a district court's grant of summary judgment due to laches and applicable state statute of limitations in an inventorship case. The plaintiff, having waited more than eight years after finding out about the patents to file suit, claimed that an intervening reexamination should have reset the time for determining laches and that the defendant's "unclean hands" in failing to include the plaintiff as an inventor precluded the application of laches. The court held that "there is no rule that the issuance of a reexamination certificate automatically resets the six-year clock for the presumption of laches" and that a plaintiff relying on "unclean hands" to defeat laches must show that "the defendant's misconduct was responsible for the plaintiff's delay in bringing suit."

More detail of Serdarevic v. Adv. Med. Optics, Inc. after the jump.

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Full post as published by FileWrapper on July 17, 2008 (boomark / email).