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Preliminary injunction that merely prohibits “other products” is overbroad

Preliminary injunction that merely prohibits “other products” is overbroad

M-I v. FPUSA is a nonprecedential case decided on September 24, 2015 on appeal from the Western District of Texas. There, the district court preliminarily enjoined defendant FPUSA from promoting, selling, or renting a system that infringed one or more claims of plaintiff M-I’s patent. FPUSA appealed.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the preliminary injunction on the merits, and remanded so it could be more narrowly tailored.

The Federal Circuit upheld the preliminary injunction on the merits. Under the regional circuit law (5th Circuit) which applies for reviewing preliminary injunctions, a district court’s decision to grant or deny a preliminary injunction is reviewed for abuse of discretion. The district court found M-I would likely suffer irreparable harm because (1) M-I would potentially lose market share since M-I and FPUSA are “each other’s sole competitors;” and (2) FPUSA is a small subsidiary of a foreign corporation, and “district courts often find that money damages are insufficient in cases involving foreign infringers.” The district court did not err because a two-player market creates an inference than an infringing sale amounts to a lost sale for the patentee; and FPUSA did not offer any evidence of its ability to satisfy a judgment.

The Federal Circuit held the injunction overbroad. The injunction was overly broad because it enjoined “other products.” Broad injunctions that merely instruct the enjoined party not to infringe are improper because they frustrate the remedy of contempt. Contempt is only available for a narrow class of devices, those that “are no more than colorably different from the enjoined product and which clearly are infringements of the patent.”

 

M-I LLC v. FPUSA, LLC, 626 F. App’x 995 (Fed. Cir. 2015)

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