Our weekly SoCal IP Institute meeting on Monday, May 20, 2013 will be a discussion of one Federal Circuit case regarding subject matter jurisdiction and a 9th Circuit case regarding copyrights.  Brief synopses of the cases appear below.

Forrester Environmental v. Wheelabrator Technologies, Case No. 12-1686 (Fed. Cir. May 16, 2013) (available here).

The Federal Circuit vacated and remanded defendant’s summary judgment motion regarding plaintiff’s state law business tort claims. The Federal Circuit held that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ claims because: 1) defendant’s allegedly inaccurate statements regarding its patent rights concerned conduct taking place entirely in Taiwan; 2) the use of a patented process outside the United States is not an act of patent infringement; and thus, 3) there is no prospect of a future U.S. infringement suit arising out of the Taiwan company’s use of the parties’ products in Taiwan, and accordingly no prospect of inconsistent judgments between state and federal courts.

Righthaven LLC v. Hoehn, Case No. 11-16571 (9th Cir. May 9, 2013) (available here).

Dismissal of two copyright infringement suits is :1) affirmed in part, where agreements assigning plaintiff the bare right to sue for infringement of newspaper articles, without the transfer of any associated exclusive rights in the articles, did not confer standing to sue; and 2) vacated in part, as to the portion of the district court’s order granting summary judgment on fair use in one of the suits, because given plaintiff’s lack of standing, the district court lacked jurisdiction to rule in the alternative on the fair use defense.

All are invited to join us in our discussion during the SoCal IP Institute meeting on Monday, May 20, 2013 at Noon in our Westlake Village office. This activity is approved for 1 hour of MCLE credit. If you will be joining us, please RSVP to Noelle Smith by 9 am Monday morning.