{"id":647,"date":"2016-03-23T08:22:20","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T12:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=647"},"modified":"2016-03-29T16:21:09","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T20:21:09","slug":"assignor-estoppel-is-still-a-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=647","title":{"rendered":"Assignor Estoppel is Still A Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Mag Aerospace Industries, Inc. v,\u00a0B\/E Aerospace, Inc.<\/em>, [2015-1370, 1426] (March 23, 2016), the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of non-infringement, and the district court’s ruling\u00a0that the doctrine of assignor estoppel barred B\/E from\u00a0challenging the validity of the patents.<\/p>\n

One of the inventors of the patents-in-suit, Pondelick, now works for B\/E..but Pondelick assigned the patents to his former employer, who in turn assigned them to MAG. The district court concluded that Pondelick was in privity with B\/E and thus that assignor estoppel applied to bar B\/E from attacking the validity of the patents.<\/p>\n

The district court analyzed a number of factors identified in Shamrock Technologies to determine whether a finding of privity was appropriate:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. the assignor\u2019s leadership role at the new employer;<\/li>\n
  2. the assignor\u2019s ownership stake in the defendant company;<\/li>\n
  3. whether the defendant company changed course from manufacturing non-infringing goods to infringing activity after the inventor was hired;<\/li>\n
  4. the assignor\u2019s role in the infringing activities;<\/li>\n
  5. whether the inventor was hired to start the infringing operations;<\/li>\n
  6. whether the decision to manufacture the infringing product was made partly by the inventor;<\/li>\n
  7. whether the defendant company began manufacturing the accused product shortly after hiring\u00a0the assignor; and<\/li>\n
  8. whether the inventor was in charge of the infringing operation.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The district court acknowledged B\/E\u2019s arguments but found on balance that assignor estoppel was appropriate. The Federal Circuit found that the district court\u2019s conclusion was not clearly erroneous, agreeing that many of the Shamrock<\/em> factors weigh in favor of finding privity.<\/p>\n

    Of course the PTAB does not apply Assignor Estoppel, so patent challengers should raise their challenges there, and patent assignees should consider language in their assignments to forestall such challenges.<\/strong><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In Mag Aerospace Industries, Inc. v,\u00a0B\/E Aerospace, Inc., [2015-1370, 1426] (March 23, 2016), the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of non-infringement, and the district court’s ruling\u00a0that the doctrine of assignor estoppel barred B\/E from\u00a0challenging the validity of the patents. One … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":662,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}