notice Archives - IP UPDATE

Heads Up: Defendants Deserve Fair Notice of Preliminary Injunctions

by Tessa Kroll | Nov 3, 2022 | Patents

In one of two concurrent opinions concerning the same design patent case, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated a district court’s grant of a preliminary injunction and an order extending the preliminary injunction to new defendants for lack of notice under Rule 65(a). ABC Corp. I v. P’ship & Unincorporated Ass’ns Identified on Schedule “A”, Case No. 21-2150 (Fed. Cir. Oct. 28, 2022) (Taranto, Dyk, Stoll, JJ.)

On August 17, 2020, ABC Corporation I and ABC Corporation II (collectively, ABC) brought a design patent infringement action asserting four “hoverboard” design patents against several online merchants. The ABC patents claim designs for handle-less, two-wheeled, motorized, stand-on vehicles commonly referred to as hoverboards. Attached to its original and amended complaints, ABC provided a list of defendants in a Schedule A that was amended throughout the proceedings as new defendants were identified. Gyroor-US was an originally named defendant on Schedule A, but it was not served with the complaint and summons until January 29, 2021.

On November 24, 2020, the district court granted ABC’s November 20, 2020, motion for a preliminary injunction against the defendants then listed on Schedule A, including Gyroor-US, which had not yet been served and was not given notice of the motion under Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(a). On May 24, 2021, the court also granted ABC’s May 6, 2021, motion to amend Schedule A to add GaodeshangUS, Fengchi-US and Urbanmax, binding them to the 2020 preliminary injunction even though they too had not received Rule 65(a) notice and were not served with process until June 25, 2021. GaodeshangUS filed a notice of appeal immediately following the court’s May 24 order. After several unsuccessful motions to vacate the 2020 preliminary injunction for lack of notice, Fengchi-US, Urbanmax and Gyroor-US also filed notices of appeal.

The Federal Circuit first determined that it had jurisdiction to hear the three appeals by GaodeshangUS, Fengchi-US, Urbanmax and Gyroor-US under 28 U.S.C. § 1292(c)(1), which grants the Federal Circuit exclusive jurisdiction of an appeal from an “interlocutory order[] . . . granting, continuing, modifying, refusing or dissolving [an] injunction[], or refusing to dissolve or modify [an] injunction[]” in any case over which the Federal Circuit would have jurisdiction of an appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1295, such as cases arising under the patent laws. The Court began by considering GaodeshangUS’s May 24, 2021, notice of appeal, which stated that the appeal was from the preliminary injunction “entered in this action on November 24, 2021 [sic],” rather than the May 24, 2021, order. The parties disputed whether GaodeshangUS’s notice of appeal was timely filed within 30 days of the relevant order and whether the May 24 order was appealable as a modification of the 2020 preliminary injunction. The Federal Circuit concluded that GaodeshangUS’s appeal should be interpreted to refer to the May 24 order because it was filed on the same day as the order and “a mistake in designating the judgment appealed from” is not fatal if “the intent to [...]

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No Service, No Notice

by Himanshu Patel | Sep 2, 2021 | Trade Secrets

Addressing the notice requirements of Fed. R. of Civ. Pro. 65(a)(1), the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction, finding that the aggrieved party did not have sufficient notice of the possibility of a preliminary injunction. Document Operations, L.L.C., v. AOS Legal Tech., Inc., Case No. 20-20388 (5th Cir. Aug. 23, 2021) (Per Curiam) (unpublished).

In 2017, Doc. Ops. entered into a licensing agreement by which AOS Japan would serve as the company’s exclusive representative and marketing provider in Japan for its virtual data room technology. Later, Doc. Ops. learned that a competing product known as AOS VDR had been developed by AOS Korea and would soon be marketed in the two Asian countries. Despite protests from AOS Japan that AOS Korea developed AOS VDR independently, Doc. Ops. filed suit alleging violation of the Texas Uniform Trade Secrets Act and for common law breach of contract, fraudulent inducement, conversion, civil conspiracy and breach of fiduciary duty.

The licensing agreement mandated that AOS Japan protect Doc. Ops.’ confidential information and also prohibited AOS Japan from acting to “represent, promote, develop, or otherwise try to sell within [Japan] any lines of product that. . . compete with [the technology].” Doc. Ops. sought a temporary restraining order (TRO) as well as preliminary injunction and filed and emailed copies of the complaint and TRO motion to AOS representatives. Once a Zoom hearing was scheduled, Doc. Ops. again contacted AOS to inform it of the hearing date. When AOS failed to appear at the hearing, the district court chose to reschedule the hearing three weeks later in order to ensure that AOS was aware of the hearing.

During this three-week interval, Doc. Ops. continued to communicate relevant dates and filings with AOS, which had appointed Texas-based counsel. One of these communications included a letter from Doc. Ops. to the district court stating that if the district court granted its TRO motion, Doc. Ops. would seek to conduct limited expedited discovery to prepare for a subsequent preliminary injunction. AOS failed to appear at the second hearing, stating that it would not appear until served with process. Subsequently, the district court not only granted the TRO motion and the related request for expedited discovery but also issued a preliminary injunction against AOS. AOS appealed both the preliminary injunction and the order granting expedited discovery.

The Fifth Circuit first explained that Rule 65 requires sufficient notice for a preliminary injunction, which the Supreme Court of the United States has interpreted as implying a hearing where the defendant is given a fair opportunity to oppose the preliminary injunction. The Court contrasted the notice requirement for preliminary injunctions from the more informal notice requirement for TROs. While TRO hearings are sometimes converted into preliminary injunction hearings, this conversion has two requirements: Sufficient notice and an opportunity to meaningfully prepare and respond.

The Fifth Circuit found that while AOS certainly had notice that a preliminary injunction was looming, it lacked sufficient notice that this relief would [...]

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As Due Process Recognizes, it’s Hard to Shoot at a Moving Claim Construction Target

by McDermott Will & Emery | Aug 5, 2021 | Patents

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated several Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) decisions as violating due process and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), referencing the parties’ inability to respond to the PTAB’s sua sponte construction of a term on which the parties had previously agreed. Qualcomm Inc. v. Intel Corp., Case Nos. 20-1589; -1594 (Fed. Cir. July 27, 2021) (Moore, C.J.)

After Qualcomm sued Intel over a patent directed to techniques for generating a power tracking supply voltage for a circuit that processes multiple radio frequency signals simultaneously, Intel filed six inter partes review (IPR) petitions challenging the validity of Qualcomm’s patents. In each petition, Intel proposed that the claim term “a plurality of carrier aggregated transmit signals” meant “signals for transmission on multiple carriers at the same time to increase the bandwidth for a user.” Qualcomm proposed a different construction: “signals from a single terminal utilizing multiple component carriers which provide extended transmission bandwidth for a user transmission from the single terminal.” Neither party disputed that the signals were required to increase user bandwidth, either at the PTAB or in a parallel proceeding before the US International Trade Commission (USITC) where the USITC adopted a construction—including the increased bandwidth requirement.

However, during the oral hearing, one of the administrative patent judges (APJs) asked Intel counsel about the inclusion of the bandwidth limitation in the claim construction. No other APJ raised, or asked Qualcomm, any questions about the increased bandwidth requirement in the claim construction. The day after the hearing, the PTAB sua sponte ordered additional briefing on the meaning of other claim terms that had been extensively discussed at the hearing.

The PTAB ultimately issued six final written decisions concluding that all challenged claims were unpatentable. In doing so, the PTAB omitted any requirement that the signals increase or extend bandwidth in construing the term “a plurality of carrier aggregated transmit signals” to mean “signals for transmission on multiple carriers.” The PTAB also held that “means for determining a single power tracking signal” (power tracker limitation) was a means-plus-function limitation and that an integrated circuit (IC) board, the “power tracker 582,” was the corresponding structure.

Qualcomm timely appealed, arguing that 1) it was not afforded notice of, or an adequate opportunity to respond to, the PTAB’s construction of “a plurality of carrier aggregated transmit signals” and 2) that the PTAB’s construction of the power tracker limitation was erroneous for failing to include an algorithm in the corresponding structure.

NOTICE AND OPPORTUNITY TO RESPOND TO THE PTAB’S CONSTRUCTION

The Federal Circuit has discussed the administrative and notice requirements provided by the APA and due process in IPR proceedings: “[a] patent owner in [an IPR] is undoubtedly entitled to notice of and a fair opportunity to meet the grounds of rejection” (Belden v. Berk-Tek). The Court observed that for IPRs, the PTAB must “timely inform” the patent owner of “the matters of fact and law asserted” and, in terms of notice, “must provide ‘all interested [...]

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