Intellectual Property Law

Insufficient enforcement activity in district by patentee leads to dismissal of DJ action

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

In a decision Monday, the Federal Circuit affirmed a district court's dismissal of a declaratory judgment action against a British patentee for lack of personal jurisdiction.  The facts of the case are similar to the Avocent case decided a few months ago.  Here, the patentee's only contacts with the district in which the action was brought were the sending of a cease and desist letter and non-exclusively licensing the patent in suit in the jurisdiction.  Under Avocent, this was simply insufficient to support jurisdiction against the foreign declaratory judgment defendant.

As with Avocent, Judge Newman dissented.  She cited many of the same reasons for her dissent as she did in her Avocent dissent and also observed that the trend should be to make declaratory judgments easier to obtain, not more difficult, particularly in light of the Supreme Court's decision in MedImmune.

More detail of Autogenomics, Inc. v. Oxford Gene Tech. Ltd. after the jump.

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Full post as published by FileWrapper on May 20, 2009 (boomark / email).