Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-casd-3_16-cv-02350/USCOURTS-casd-3_16-cv-02350-5/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 830
Nature of Suit: Patent
Cause of Action: 35:0271 Patent Infringement

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

MYGO, LLC, a California corporation,

Pro Se,

Plaintiff,

v.

MISSION BEACH INDUSTRIES, LLC, 

a California corporation; and Does 1-10, 

inclusive,

Defendant.

Case No.: 16-cv-2350-GPC-RBB

ORDER:

(1) DISMISSING FOR LACK OF 

JURISDICTION PLAINTIFF’S 

PATENT INFRINGEMENT CAUSE 

OF ACTION

(2) DENYING AS MOOT 

DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO 

STRIKE PLAINTIFF’S SECOND 

PATENT L.R. 3.1 DISCLOSURES

[DKT. NOS. 50, 52]

Before the Court are two motions filed by Defendant Mission Beach Industries, 

LLC (“MBI”) against Plaintiff MyGo, LLC. MBI moves for (1) partial summary 

judgment against Plaintiff based on the Patent and Trademark Office’s reexamination of 

the 9,383,630 (‘630 patent) and (2) to strike Plaintiff’s Second Patent L.R. 3.1 

Disclosures. Dkt. No. 50, 52. On April 20, 2018, Defendant filed a Motion for Partial 

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Summary Judgment. Plaintiff filed a response on May 14, 2018, and a reply was filed on 

May 29, 2018. Dkt. Nos. 54-55. On May 11, 2018, Defendant filed a Motion to Strike 

Plaintiff’s Second Patent Local Rule 3.1 Disclosures. Dkt. No. 52. Plaintiff filed an 

opposition to the motion to strike on May 29, 2018. Dkt. No. 56. Defendant filed a reply 

on June 4, 2018. Dkt. No. 58. Given that these motions relate to interconnected issues 

that result from the PTO’s reexamination, the Court considers both motions in this order. 

Pursuant to Civil Local Rule 7.1(d)(1), the Court finds the matter suitable for 

adjudication without oral argument. For the reasons set forth below, the Court 

DISMISSES FOR LACK OF JURISDICTION Plaintiff’s Patent Infringement cause 

of action without prejudice. As a result, Defendant’s Motion to Strike is rendered

MOOT.

I. BACKGROUND

On September 16, 2016, Plaintiff filed a complaint alleging: (1) Patent Infringement; 

(2) Federal False Marking; (3) False Advertising; (4) Common Law Unfair Competition; 

and (5) California Unfair Competition. Dkt. No. 1. On November 11, 2016, Plaintiff 

provided Defendant with its Disclosure of Asserted Claims and Infringement Contentions, 

wherein it asserted that Defendant had infringed claims 1, 2, 4, 7, and 16-22 of the ‘630 

Patent. Dkt. No. 50-3, Buche Decl., Ex. B. On December 12, 2016, Defendant filed a 

request for ex parte reexamination of the ‘630 patent. Dkt. No. 50-3, Buche Decl. ¶ 5. On 

February 16, 2017, the PTO granted Defendant’s request for ex parte reexamination of the 

‘630 patent. Dkt. No. 50-3, Buche Decl., Ex. C. On April 13, 2017, the Court stayed this 

case pending the Patent and Trademark Office’s reexamination of the ‘630 patent. Dkt. 

No. 38. 

On March 23, 2018, the PTO issued a notice of intent to issue an ex parte 

reexamination certificate. Dkt. No. 50-5, Buche Decl., Ex. A at 4. The PTO cancelled 

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claims 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 16-22 of the ‘630 Patent. Id at 5. However, the PTO amended claims 

3, 5, and 9 such that they were now in independent form and incorporated the subject matter 

of the claims from which they depended, including claim 1. Id. On April 20, 2018, the 

PTO issued an ex parte reexamination certificate for the ‘630 patent incorporating these 

changes. Dkt. No. 52-5, Buche Decl., Ex. B at 3. 

Prior to the stay, on November 11, 2016, MyGo sent Defendant its first “Disclosure 

of Asserted Claims and Preliminary Infringement Contentions” (“First Disclosures”) under 

Patent Local Rule 3.1. Dkt. No. 52-2, Buche Decl. ¶ 2, Ex. A. These disclosures asserted 

only claims 1, 2, 4, 7, and 16-22 of the ‘630 patent. On April 17, 2018, Magistrate Judge 

Ruben B. Brooks held a telephonic status conference with the parties, wherein Plaintiff’s 

counsel indicated that MyGo was going to assert additional claims of the ‘630 patent that 

were confirmed as patentable during ex parte reexamination. Dkt. No. 56-1, Coddington 

Decl. ¶ 3. Plaintiff did not request or brief a motion for leave to amend. On April 17, 2018, 

Magistrate Judge Brooks issued a Scheduling Order stating in relevant part:

1. On or before May 1, 2018, each party claiming patent infringement 

shall separately serve on all parties a Disclosure of Asserted Claims and 

Preliminary Infringement pursuant to Patent L.R. 3.1 and produce 

documents as required by Patent L.R. 3.2. 

Dkt. No. 49 at 1. On May 1, 2018, MyGo submitted an amended “Disclosure of Asserted 

Claims and Preliminary Infringement Contentions” (“Second Disclosures”) which now 

asserted claims 3 and 5 of the ‘630 patent. Dkt. No. 52-2, Buche Decl. ¶ 4, Ex. C.

II. MOTION FOR PARTIAL SUMMARY JUDGMENT

A. Mootness

Under Federal Circuit law, “when a claim is cancelled, the patentee loses any cause 

of action based on that claim, and any pending litigation in which the claims are asserted 

becomes moot.” Fresenius USA, Inc. v. Baxter Intern., Inc., 721 F.3d 1330, 1340 (Fed. 

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Cir. 2013). “Suits based on cancelled claims must be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.” 

See SHFL Entertainment, Inc. v. DigiDeal Corp., No. 2016-2705, 2018 WL 2049238, at 

*3 (Fed. Cir. May 2, 2018). See also Foster v. Carson, 347 F.3d 742, 745 (9th Cir. 2003) 

(“Mootness is a jurisdictional issue, and federal courts have no jurisdiction to hear a case 

that is moot, that is, where no actual or live controversy exists. If there is no longer a 

possibility that an appellant can obtain relief for his claim, that claim is moot and must be 

dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.”) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). 

During reexamination, “if the PTO confirms the original claim in identical form, a 

suit based on that claim may continue, but if the original claim is cancelled or amended to 

cure invalidity, the patentee's cause of action is extinguished and the suit fails.” Fresenius, 

721 F.3d at 1340. “Even if the claim is amended during reexamination to render the claim 

valid, no suit can be maintained for the period prior to the validating amendment.” Id. at 

1339.

Defendant requests that the Court grant summary judgment as to Plaintiff’s patent 

infringement claim and as to its counterclaim for invalidity of the asserted claims of the 

‘630 Patent because such claims were cancelled by the PTO. 

1. Cancelled Claims

Here, the PTO cancelled claims 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 16-22 of the ‘630 patent. See Dkt. No. 

50-5, Buche Decl., Ex. A. Consequently, the Court concludes that any causes of action

associated with those specific claims are moot because no live controversy exists as to 

those claims. Summary judgment is not appropriate as to these claims because they are 

now moot. Accordingly, the Court finds that any Plaintiff’s patent infringement cause of 

action asserting infringement of claims 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, and 16-22 of the ‘630 patent is MOOT. 

See SHFL Entertainment, 2018 WL 2049238, at *3 (vacating entry of summary judgment 

as to cancelled claims and remanding to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction); Am. Tech. 

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Ceramics Corp. v. Presidio Components, Inc., No. 14-CV-6544(KAM)(GRB), 2018 WL 

1525686, at *8 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 27, 2018) (dismissing as moot portion of infringement 

claims cancelled by the PTO during inter partes review). 

2. Claims 3 and 51

The Court next considers whether the entirety of Plaintiff’s patent infringement 

cause of action should be dismissed as moot at this time. Plaintiff’s patent infringement 

cause of action alleges that Defendant’s product is willfully infringing “one or more claims 

set forth in the ‘630 patent.” Dkt. No. 1, Compl. ¶ 19. Plaintiff’s complaint raises specific 

examples of infringed claims of the patent including claim charts delineating infringement 

of claims 16 and 1 of the patent. Plaintiff’s complaint also specifically states that it 

“reserves the right to amend or supplement its infringement theories upon more 

information becoming available through formal discovery and/or this Court completing its 

claim construction proceedings. Pursuant to CivLR 3.1, MyGo will serve a Disclosure of 

Asserted Claims and Infringement Contentions (that may alter and/or supplement the 

infringement charts submitted herewith).” Dkt. No. 1, Compl. ¶ 22. However, Plaintiff’s 

First Disclosures––provided to Defendants prior to the reexamination procedure––did not 

assert recently amended claims 3 and 5, and instead alleged only infringement of the claims 

that were recently cancelled by the PTO.2 

 

1

In its reply to the Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, Defendant observes that litigating 

infringement of claims 3 and 5 would be pointless due to the doctrine of intervening rights. That issue is 

not relevant to this instant motion. See Dkt. No. 55 at 5. 

2 On May 2, 2018, the Federal Circuit issued a decision in SHFL Entertainment v. DigiDeal 

Corporation, 2018 WL 2049238, at *4 (Fed. Cir. May 2, 2018), where the Federal Circuit held that the 

“question of whether [a cause of action] is moot as to the new and amended claims that emerged from 

the reexaminations of the two patents, therefore necessarily depends on whether those claims are 

substantially identical to the originally asserted claims.” (emphasis added). The district court in 

DigiDeal failed to evaluate whether the post-reexamination claims were substantially identical to the 

originally asserted claims. The Court finds that this analysis is inapplicable to the instant action because 

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In Target Training Intern., Ltd. v. Extended Disc. North America, Inc., 645 F. App’x 

1018 (Fed. Cir. 2016), the Federal Circuit considered whether claims newly added to a 

patent during a reexamination that cancelled asserted claims were automatically added to 

pending infringement litigation. There, the district court dismissed the newly added claims 

because (1) Target did not allege infringement on the new claims at the time the complaint 

was filed because the newly added claims did not exist and (2) that Target was bound to its 

preliminary infringement contentions issued prior to the reexamination. See id. at 1024. 

In particular, the Federal Circuit emphasized that there was “no authority for the 

proposition that unasserted patent claims must be considered by the district court prior to 

a dismissal of a case based on cancelled asserted claims. We know of no authority that so 

states.” Id.

This case is substantially similar to the facts at issue in Target Training. While here 

the PTO amended existing claims 3 and 5 as opposed to adding entirely new claims, at no 

point in the litigation––prior to the recently set May 1, 2018 deadline––did Plaintiff ever 

assert infringement of claims 3 and 5. Consequently, Plaintiff’s cause of action was based 

exclusively on “cancelled asserted claims.” See id.

Critical to this question is whether Plaintiff is bound by their prior asserted claims 

and preliminary infringement contentions unless leave of court is provided. The Court 

agrees with the Target Training court––and finds that Plaintiff is bound by their prior 

asserted claims absent leave to amend. Such reasoning is supported by cases where 

 

unlike in DigiDeal where the amended claims had been specifically asserted in the initial prereexamination disclosures, MyGo never sought to include claims 3 or 5 in the action until after the 

reexamination proceedings had concluded. See S, at *1 (first set of disclosures on March 12, 2013 

disclosed assertion of claims 1-3, 42-44, and 46 of the ‘982 patent, while second disclosure issued on 

January 17, 2016 involved amended claims 1-3, 42-44 and 46, the same amended claims originally 

disclosed). Therefore, the “substantially identical” analysis is inapplicable because there would 

necessarily be no “originally asserted claim” to compare the amended claims to. Id. at *4 (emphasis 

added).

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Plaintiffs have specifically sought––via motions for leave to amend––to add claims 

different than those originally asserted after PTO reexamination. See, e.g., Wave Loch, 

Inc. v. Am. Wave Machines, Inc., No. 08-CV-928 BAS NLS, 2014 WL 7261552, at *1 

(S.D. Cal. Oct. 1, 2014) (denying motion for leave to amend to add previously unasserted 

claims after conclusion of ex parte reexamination); Lotes Co., Ltd. v. Hon Hai Precision 

Industry Co., Ltd., 2017 WL 282583, at *6 (N.D. Cal. 2017) (granting leave to amend 

complaint to reflect outcomes of concluded reexaminations of patents in suit); ZiLOG, Inc. 

v. Quicklogic Corp., No. C03-03725 JW, 2006 WL 563057, at *1 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 6, 2006)

(allowing leave to amend initial disclosures of asserted claims to add an additional claim 

in the patent after ex parte reexamination proceeding); NetAirus Techs., LLC v. Apple, Inc., 

No. LA CV10-03257 JAK EX, 2012 WL 12124908, at *5 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 5, 2012)

(denying leave to amend as to certain patent claims where “Plaintiff has offered no good 

cause to resurrect claims that it either had not asserted or withdrawn earlier in the case”). 

Consequently, the Court finds that a motion for leave to amend is required in order to add 

previously unasserted claims in the first instance after ex parte reexamination. 

Further, the Court is persuaded by Defendant’s argument that Local Rule 3.6(a)3

provides a matter of right amendment only for amended infringement contentions, not for 

amended asserted claims. Compare L.R. 3.6(a) (Amended and Final Contentions stating 

“As a matter of right, a party asserting infringement may serve Amended Infringement 

Contentions no later than the filing of the parties’ Joint Claim Construction Chart.”) with 

L.R. 3.1 (“Not later than fourteen (14) days after the Initial Case Management Conference, 

a party claiming patent infringement must serve on all parties a “Disclosure of Asserted 

 

3 The Federal Circuit has held that “[l]ocal patent rules are essentially a series of case management 

orders that fall within a district court's broad power to control its docket and enforce its order. Keranos, 

LLC v. Silicon Storage Tech., Inc., 797 F.3d 1025, 1035 (Fed. Cir. 2015)

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Claims and Infringement Contentions.”) (emphasis added).

4 Furthermore, in Multimedia 

Patent Tr. v. Apple Inc., Judge Huff declined to allow a Rule 3.65amendment under 

substantially similar facts where plaintiff was attempting to add new claims within a patent 

for the first time without leave of the court. She reasoned:

MPT's final infringement contentions allege for the first time that the CAN–

1 products infringe claims 31 and 32 of the ′878 Patent. These changes are 

amendments with respect to the information required 

by Patent Local Rule 3.1(b). This rule requires counsel to provide a list of 

which accused products infringe which asserted claims. Therefore, MPT's 

amendments with respect to claims 31 and 32 of the ′878 Patent are not 

permitted under Patent Local Rule 3.6. . . . . 

The only amendments that could be permitted under Rule 3.6 are 

amendments to the contentions related to claim 13 because that claim was 

asserted against the CAN–1 products in the prior contentions.

No. 10-CV-2618-H KSC, 2012 WL 4547449, at *3 (S.D. Cal. Sept. 28, 2012), at *3 

(emphasis added). Similar to Apple where MPT attempted to assert infringement 

contentions regarding new claims in contravention of Patent Local Rule 3.1(b), the Court 

concludes that matter of right amendments provide only a right to amend infringement 

contentions of previously asserted claims pursuant to Rule 3.1(b). 

Accordingly, the Court concludes that like in Target Training, the proper remedy is 

a dismissal of the entire patent infringement cause of action. See Target Training, 645 F.

App’x at 1023 (rejecting proposition that “unasserted patent claims must be considered by 

 

4 The Court does not view the magistrate judge’s inclusion of this deadline in the post-reexamination

Scheduling Order to provide a matter of right amendment to the disclosure of new “asserted claims.” 

Plaintiffs’ have never formally requested leave to amend to add their previously unasserted claims. 

5

Judge Huff’s decision considered an older version of Rule 3.6, but the underlying reasoning of her 

decision remains applicable to the current rules. The Southern District of California amended its Patent 

Local Rules on February 8, 2013. See Multimedia, 2013 WL 5779645, at *11.

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the district court prior to the dismissal of a case based on cancelled asserted claims.”)

(emphasis in original). However, unlike in Target Training, where the district court did 

not specify whether the dismissal was without prejudice, this Court will dismiss the patent 

infringement cause of action without prejudice. See id. at 1022 (“The court’s order did not 

specify whether it was dismissing with or without prejudice.”). In particular, the Court 

recognizes that the Federal Circuit in Target Training emphasized the importance of 

allowing opportunities to a post-reexamination plaintiff to seek leave to amend. See id. at 

1025 (“A district court has no obligation to provide relief not sought. Because TTI failed 

to assert the newly added claims, despite opportunities to do so, the district court did not 

err by dismissing the case as moot.”). Accordingly, Plaintiff may submit a motion for leave 

to amend to actually assert the claims at issue (3 and 5) and the parties may litigate any 

such motion at that time. 

III. Motion to Strike

Defendant also moves to strike Plaintiff’s Second Disclosures as in violation of the 

local rules. Plaintiff argues that Magistrate Judge Brooks’ Case Management Order 

allowed implicit leave to amend by resetting dates for initial disclosures of asserted claims 

and infringement contentions. 

As stated above, this Court views Target Training to hold that leave to amend is 

required to maintain a patent infringement action where previously unasserted patent 

claims are asserted in the first instance only after the PTO has newly added or amended 

such claims. See also Wave-Loch, 2014 WL 7261552, at *2-3. As claims 3 and 5 were 

never asserted in this litigation prior to the PTO’s decision, the Court dismisses the patent 

infringement action above without prejudice. This rule recognizes the holding in Target 

Training that parties may be bound to their prior asserted claims and infringement 

contentions absent leave to amend. Moreover, this decision is in accord with the general 

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policy rationale of the Local Patent Rules requiring that plaintiffs crystallize their patent 

infringement theories in the early stages of litigation. See Theranos, Inc. v. Fuisz Pharma 

LLC, 2012 WL 6000798, at *2 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 30, 2012) (Patent Local Rule 3.1 is intended 

to require the party claiming infringement to “crystallize its theories of the case early in 

the litigation and to adhere to those theories once disclosed.”); O2 Micro Intern. Ltd. v. 

Monolithic Power Sys., Inc., 467 F.3d 1355, 1364 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (Particular 

to patent cases, infringement and invalidity contentions are “designed specifically to 

require parties to crystallize their theories of the case early in the litigation so as to prevent 

the shifting sands approach to claim construction.”) (internal quotation marks omitted). 

Based on the Court’s above ruling, no patent infringement action presently exists in 

this case at this time. Accordingly, the motion to strike the Second Disclosures is MOOT.

CONCLUSION

The Court DISMISSES, for lack of jurisdiction, Plaintiffs’ First Cause of Action 

alleging patent infringement. Further, the Court DENIES AS MOOT Defendant’s 

Motion to Strike Plaintiff’s Second Amended Invalidity Contentions. The Court 

VACATES the hearing currently set for July 20, 2018.

IT IS SO ORDERED. 

Dated: July 17, 2018

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