Lismont v. Alexander Binzel was decided on February 16, 2016 on appeal from the Eastern District of Virginia. There, the district court granted summary judgment for Alexander Binzel, concluding that Lismont’s inventorship claim, which he filed in the US (in 2012) ten years after the patent issued, was barred by laches. Throughout this ten year window, Lismont had multiple litigations against Binzel in German and European courts on a different but related patent. Lismont appealed the application of laches.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s holding that laches barred the claim.
“To prevail on a defense of laches, a defendant must establish that (1) the plaintiff’s delay in filing a suit was unreasonable and inexcusable; and (2) the defendant suffered material prejudice attributable to the delay.” “Further, a rebuttable presumption of laches attaches whenever more than six years passes from the time” an omitted inventor knew (or should have known) of the issuance of the patent. “This presumption of laches may be rebutted if the plaintiff offers evidence to show an excuse for the delay or that the delay was reasonable,” or by offering sufficient evidence to counter the defense’s claim of prejudice.
The presumption applied here. Lismont knew of the patent application before the patent issued, so the laches clock started running at issuance (in 2002). And Lismont initiated suit in the US more than ten years later in 2012 (the presumption attached 6 years after issuance). The European and German litigations do not remove the presumption because Lismont did not challenge the inventorship of the relevant patent in those suits.
The Federal Circuit then tackled the issue of rebutting the presumption. “[A] patent owner may avoid the consequences of what would otherwise be an unreasonable delay in filing suit by establishing that he or she was engaged in other litigation.” But “the defendant must have adequate notice of the other proceedings as well as plaintiff’s intention to pursue its patent rights upon completion of the other proceedings.”
Binzel did not have adequate notice because “the mere initiation of patent litigation in a foreign jurisdiction and the existence of United States patents are not sufficient to notify a defendant that the plaintiff will eventually seek to assert its patent rights in the United States.” Binzel needed general notice of the subsequent American suit, and specific notice of the inventorship claim. Because Lismont did not provide such notice, laches barred the later claim.
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