Source: https://www.b2ipreport.com/swip-report/fail-%C2%A7101-always-exceptional-%C2%A7285/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 03:59:24+00:00

Document:
Is a fail on §101 always “exceptional” under §285?
The answer to the question posed by the title is no, the Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Inventor Holdings, LLC v. Bed Bath & Beyond Inc., No. 2016-2442 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 8 2017) notwithstanding (reported on by this blog in “Attorney Fees Awarded for Post-Alice Patent Litigation”). Two recent district court patent cases in which the validity under 35 USC §101 of the asserted patents was in question yielded different results on the award of attorney fees under 35 USC § 285 (Opal Run LLC, Plaintiff v. C & A Marketing, Inc., Defendant, No. 2:16-CV-00024-JRG-RSP (Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division) (November 29, 2017) (“Opal Run v. C&A”) and Product Association Technologies v. Clique Media Group, No. CV 17-5463-GW (PJWx), (Central District of California) (November 30, 2017) (“PAT v. Clique Media”)). Both cases slightly predate the Federal Circuit’s Inventor Holdings decision.
The Federal Circuit determined that the district court did not abuse its discretion in granting an award of attorney fees to BBB. It was sufficient for the district court to rely solely on the weakness of IH’s § 101 arguments, and affirmed the weakness of IH’s § 101 arguments. The case does not establish a mandatory standard for “exceptional” behavior.
In this author’s view, both Opal Run v. C&A and PAT v. Clique Media are consistent with Inventor Holdings in that neither suggests an abuse of discretion. The decision in PAT v. Clique Media to not grant an award of attorney fees is not an abuse of discretion given the failure by the moving party to provide the court with “. . . evidence to show that Plaintiff’s opposition to Defendant’s § 101 motion relied on baseless or frivolous legal arguments, as opposed to simply losing arguments” and a failure to show that PAT’s choices were “. . . an unreasonable way to litigate a lawsuit.” The Opal Run v. C&A decision to award fees, with multiple bases for concluding that Opal Run litigated in an unreasonable manner, is also not an abuse of discretion.
There were a couple of notable differences between the district court cases. A key difference was that the merits of the § 101 arguments were tested in the PAT v. Clique Media case and not tested in the Opal Run v. C&A case. Another difference was in the number of lawsuits filed by the plaintiffs on the same day, with Opal Run filing more than twice as many lawsuits as PAT.
It is clear that the court in Opal Run v. C&A found plaintiff Opal Run’s way of litigating to be lacking, and that the court in PAT v. Clique Media found defendant Clique Media’s way of litigating to be lacking.
little discovery by Opal Run.
Opal Run’s behavior was characterized by the court as “consistent with the filing of patent infringement actions to force settlements with no intention of testing the merits of the claims."
Think twice before asserting claims that may be vulnerable to a §101 challenge.
Prior to asserting a claim that may be vulnerable to a §101 challenge, decide if saving the claim from a §101 review is worth the risk of paying attorney fees.
When seeking attorney’s fees for a defendant, dig as deep as possible to find evidence of the plaintiff’s motives in asserting the infringement claims.

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