Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca13-19-01134/USCOURTS-ca13-19-01134-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
O.F. Mossberg & Sons, Inc.
Appellee
Timney Manufacturing, Inc.
Appellant
Timney Triggers, LLC
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________

O.F. MOSSBERG & SONS, INC.,

Plaintiff-Appellee

v.

TIMNEY TRIGGERS, LLC, TIMNEY 

MANUFACTURING, INC.,

Defendants-Appellants

______________________

2019-1134

______________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the 

District of Connecticut in No. 3:12-cv-00198-VAB, Judge 

Victor A. Bolden.

______________________

Decided: April 13, 2020

______________________

MARY MINTEL MILLER, Reid & Riege, P.C., Hartford, 

CT, argued for plaintiff-appellee. Also represented by 

DOMINIC FULCO, III. 

 BRETT L. FOSTER, Dorsey & Whitney LLP, Salt Lake 

City, UT, argued for defendants-appellants. Also represented by ELLIOT HALES, MARK A. MILLER, TAMARA 

KAPALOSKI. 

 ______________________

Case: 19-1134 Document: 46 Page: 1 Filed: 04/13/2020
2 O.F. MOSSBERG & SONS, INC. v. TIMNEY TRIGGERS, LLC

Before LOURIE, REYNA, and HUGHES, Circuit Judges.

HUGHES, Circuit Judge.

This is an attorney’s fees case involving a voluntary 

dismissal without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) of the 

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Appellee O.F. Mossberg 

& Sons, Inc. sued appellants Timney Triggers, LLC and 

Timney Manufacturing, Inc. (collectively, Timney) for patent infringement. Timney pursued invalidation of Mossberg’s patent through post-grant proceedings for over five 

years. The district court proceedings were stayed during 

this time. Timney ultimately succeeded; the United States 

Patent and Trademark Office invalidated Mossberg’s patent for obviousness. Mossberg then voluntarily dismissed 

its suit under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) and Timney applied for attorney’s fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285. The district court denied Timney’s motion because, without a court decision 

with the necessary judicial imprimatur, Timney was not a 

prevailing party. We agree and therefore affirm.1

I

Mossberg purchased the patent-in-suit, U.S. Patent 

No. 7,293,385, in September 2011. Soon after, Mossberg

began licensing negotiations with Timney. When these discussions failed, Mossberg sued Timney for patent infringement in February 2012. 

Instead of answering the complaint, Timney filed for 

inter partes reexamination of the ’385 patent and a stay of 

the district court proceedings pending the outcome of the 

inter partes reexamination. The district court granted the 

stay. The Patent Office instituted the inter partes

1 Because we affirm the district court’s decision that 

Timney is not a prevailing party, we need not reach Timney’s arguments regarding the exceptional nature of the 

case.

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O.F. MOSSBERG & SONS, INC. v. TIMNEY TRIGGERS, LLC 3

reexamination as to claims 1–2, 5–6 and 8–10, and subsequently rejected those claims in December 2012. Mossberg 

responded by cancelling the rejected claims and adding

new claims. But before the inter partes reexamination proceeded further, the Patent Office vacated its institution decision because Timney had not identified the real party in 

interest in its petition.

Mossberg subsequently moved to lift the stay. The district court maintained the stay. From June 2014 to December 2015, Timney filed three ex parte reexamination 

requests. In the third ex parte reexamination, the examiner rejected all pending claims over the cited prior art. 

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board affirmed the invalidity 

of all active claims of the ’385 patent. Throughout these 

reexaminations, the district court maintained the stay despite several motions by Mossberg to lift it. 

Mossberg then filed a notice of voluntary dismissal under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i). See Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A)(i) 

(providing for voluntary dismissal by the plaintiff without 

court order). The next day, the district court entered a 

docket text order stating that the case was dismissed without prejudice under Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i). 

Following dismissal, Timney filed a motion to declare 

the case exceptional so that it could pursue attorney’s fees. 

35 U.S.C. § 285 (“The court in exceptional cases may award 

reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party.”). But 

§ 285 only allows a prevailing party to collect attorney’s 

fees. The district court denied the motion, reasoning that

Timney was not a “prevailing party” because a “Rule 41 

dismissal without prejudice is not a decision on the merits 

and thus cannot be a judicial declaration altering the legal 

relationship between the parties.” O.F. Mossberg & Sons, 

Inc. v. Timney Triggers, LLC, No. 3:12-CV-00198, 2018 WL 

4398249, at *6 (D. Conn. Sept. 14, 2018); J.A. 11. 

Timney timely appealed. We have jurisdiction under 

28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).

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4 O.F. MOSSBERG & SONS, INC. v. TIMNEY TRIGGERS, LLC

II

“[O]ur review of the meaning of the term ‘prevailing 

party’ is de novo.” Inland Steel Co. v. LTV Steel Co., 

364 F.3d 1318, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2004), abrogated on other 

grounds by Raniere v. Microsoft Corp., 887 F.3d 1298 (Fed. 

Cir. 2018) (citing Waner v. Ford Motor Co., 331 F.3d 851, 

857 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (reviewing de novo whether the district 

court properly applied the 35 U.S.C. § 285 standard)).

Under § 285, a court may award reasonable attorney’s

fees to the prevailing party in an exceptional patent infringement case. 35 U.S.C. § 285; see also Octane Fitness, 

LLC v. ICON Health & Fitness, Inc., 572 U.S. 545, 553−54

(2014). The Supreme Court has said that “the touchstone 

of the prevailing party inquiry must be the material alteration of the legal relationship of the parties. This change 

must be marked by judicial imprimatur.” CRST Van Expedited, Inc. v. E.E.O.C., 136 S. Ct. 1642, 1646 (2016) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). In CRST, in 

the context of a claim for attorney’s fees under Title VII, 

the Court held that a defendant may be “prevailing” for 

purposes of attorney’s fees “even if the court’s final judgment rejects the plaintiff’s claim for a nonmerits reason.” 

Id. at 1651. 

Applying CRST, we have held that “defendants need 

not prevail on the merits to be classified as a ‘prevailing 

party.’ ” Raniere, 887 F.3d at 1306. Accordingly, the relevant inquiry “is not limited to whether a defendant prevailed on the merits, but also considers whether the district 

court’s decision—‘a judicially sanctioned change in the legal relationship of the parties’—effects or rebuffs a plaintiff’s attempt to effect a ‘material alteration in the legal 

relationship between the parties.’ ” Id. (quoting CRST, 

136 S. Ct. at 1646, 1651).

On appeal, Timney argues that the district court erred 

in its prevailing party analysis. According to Timney, by 

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O.F. MOSSBERG & SONS, INC. v. TIMNEY TRIGGERS, LLC 5

staying2 the district court proceedings over five years of

post-grant proceedings at the Patent Office, the district 

court provided the necessary judicial imprimatur. Appellants’ Br. 27 (arguing that the district court’s stay “approved, authorized[,] or supported the [Patent Office] as an 

alternative forum to decide invalidity”). Timney contends 

that CRST altered the landscape of the prevailing party 

analysis by prioritizing substance over form, making clear 

that a decision on the merits is not necessary to qualify as 

a prevailing party. This is true. And we have applied this 

principle to subsequent cases decided on non-merits issues. 

In Raniere, 887 F.3d 1298, we held that the defendants 

were the prevailing party when the district court dismissed 

a plaintiff’s claims for lack of standing. And in B.E. Tech.

L.L.C. v. Facebook, Inc., 940 F.3d 675 (Fed. Cir. 2019), we 

held that a dismissal for mootness imparts sufficient judicial imprimatur to satisfy the prevailing party inquiry. 

But the issue here is not whether there was a final decision on the merits. It is whether there was a final decision at all. Neither CRST, nor Raniere, nor B.E. 

Technology went so far as to hold that one could become a 

prevailing party without a final court decision. E.g., CRST,

2 Though Timney’s opening brief argued that the district court’s “dismissal order” was judicial imprimatur, Appellant’s Br. 23 (“The district court’s dismissal order is a 

judicially sanctioned change in the legal relationship between the parties.” (capitalization removed)), its reply brief 

makes clear that the district court’s repeated stays are the 

determinative judicial actions. See Appellant’s Reply Br. 

3−5 (“Timney’s position from the outset has been that the 

district court’s stay of the case pending reexamination is 

the judicial action that led to the invalidation of the patent.”). We therefore focus our analysis on those stays instead of the supposed “dismissal order” confirming 

Mossberg’s voluntary Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) dismissal.

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6 O.F. MOSSBERG & SONS, INC. v. TIMNEY TRIGGERS, LLC

136 S. Ct. at 1651 (holding that a “defendant has . . . fulfilled its primary objective whenever the plaintiff’s challenge is rebuffed, irrespective of the precise reason for the 

court’s decision,” and that a “defendant may prevail even if

the court’s final judgment rejects the plaintiff’s claim for a 

nonmerits reason” (emphases added)). 

In this case, there was no such final court decision. A 

properly filed Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) voluntary dismissal becomes effective immediately upon plaintiff’s filing of the 

notice of dismissal. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(A) (for voluntary dismissals by the plaintiff “Without a Court Order,” 

the plaintiff may “dismiss an action without a court order” 

(emphasis added)). Although the district court in this case 

entered a dismissal order after Timney filed its notice of 

voluntary dismissal, that dismissal order had no legal effect. That leaves only the stay, which cannot “change . . .

the legal relationship of the parties,” Raniere, 887 F.3d 

at 1306, because it remained in place while the parties determined the patent’s validity in a separate venue—the Patent Office. And the stay did not change the legal 

relationship between the parties; the Board’s invalidity decision and Mossberg’s voluntary Rule 41(a)(1)(A)(i) dismissal did. A stay, standing alone, is simply not a final court

decision capable of establishing the judicial imprimatur required for a litigant to emerge as the prevailing party under § 285. 

III

We have considered Timney’s remaining arguments 

and find them unpersuasive. Because there is no final 

court decision here, Timney cannot be a prevailing party 

for purposes of attorney’s fees under § 285. We therefore

affirm the district court’s decision that Timney is not a prevailing party.

AFFIRMED

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