SCOTUS to mull Federal Circuit refusal to apply top court's copyright laches ruling in patent case
Does the same laches standard recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2014 copyright infringement case also apply in a patent infringement case?
In an en banc decision last year, a divided 6-5 panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit crafted its own hybrid standard in its opinion (PDF), despite a ruling by the nation’s top court a year earlier that seemingly might be controlling.
Now the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments this fall in SCA Hygiene Products Aktiebolag v. First Quality Baby Products, the Associated Press reports. That is a likely sign that another reversal will be added to the list that has put the Federal Circuit ahead of the 9th Circuit in recent years as the federal appeals court whose rulings are most frequently overturned.
At issue is whether the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in the copyright infringement case of Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer also applies to patent infringement disputes.
Although the statute of limitations is different—three years in copyright cases versus six years in patent cases—the issue is much the same, Patently-O says. That is, even when the statute of limitations has not yet run, whether a claim can still be time-barred on laches grounds because the plaintiff didn’t timely pursue it.
The question of laches regularly arises in intellectual property cases, the blog post explains, because infringement is seen as an ongoing process in which each new act starts the clock anew on the statute of limitations.
Law professor Dennis Crouch of the University of Missouri authored the Patently-O post. He predicts the nation’s top court will overturn the Federal Circuit decision both because the equitable remedy of laches should not limit legal damages and because of a perceived need for uniformity in intellectual property cases.
Both parties in the patent case market adult incontinence products.
Related coverage:
ABA Journal: “‘Raging Bull’ decision could rouse patent holders to sue decades after alleged infringement”
Patently O: “Unreasonable Prejudicial Delay in Filing Patent Infringement Suits: Why the Federal Circuit Should Not Overrule Aukerman”
