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District courts order dismissing the action with prejudice held to be nonfinal due to counterclaims

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

In a decision Thursday, the a href=http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/ title=United States Court of Appeals for the Federal CircuitFederal Circuit/a affirmed a district court#39;s denial of a preliminary injunction, and held it did not have jurisdiction over the remainder of the appeal because there was no final judgment.nbsp; It was undisputed there was no infringement under the district court#39;s claim construction of the single element at issue.nbsp; After denying the requested preliminary injunction and granting the defendant#39;s motion for summary judgment of noninfringement, the district court entered an order that stated, among other things, that the quot;actionquot; was quot;dismissed with prejudice,quot; and that it was quot;final and appealable.quot;nbsp; However, the defendant had asserted counterclaims that were not mentioned in any of the briefing. nbsp;br /br /The Federal Circuit agreed with the district court#39;s claim construction, and affirmed the denial of the preliminary injunction.nbsp; However, the court held it did not have jurisdiction over the remainder of the appeal, because the defendant#39;s counterclaims were still pending, making the judgment nonfinal.nbsp; The court did have some advice for the plaintiff and the district court on remand in two footnotes, stating:br /blockquoteWhile we do not address the district court#39;s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement, we note that the claim construction we affirm herein was the basis for that decision, there being no dispute over infringement of claim 26 under that claim construction.br /br /Because we exercise jurisdiction only over the matters discussed above, we do not address the district court#39;s sua sponte dismissal of [the plaintiff#39;s] remaining claims in this appeal. Nevertheless, we suggest that the district court may wish to reconsider that determination in light of the Sixth Circuit#39;s prohibition against sua sponte dismissals except in limited circumstances.br //blockquoteMore detail of emiLOR, LLC v. Google, Inc./em after the jump.br /br / [More]

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