Opinion ID: 2770245
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: If cases such as NeuroRepair’s were heard in

Text: federal court, it would disrupt the federal-state balance Finally, to the extent federal interests are implicated by NeuroRepair’s state law claims, they do not outweigh the “especially great” interests of the state in regulating that state’s lawyers. See Gunn, 133 S. Ct. at 1068. Since Gunn, courts considering alleged violations of a variety of state laws have declined to find federal question jurisdiction notwithstanding the presence of an underlying issue of patent law. See, e.g., Forrester Envtl. Servs. Inc. v. Wheelabrator Techs., Inc., 715 F.3d 1329 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (tortious interference with a contractual relationship); MDS (Can.), 720 F.3d at 842 (breach of contract); Mirowski Family Ventures, LLC v. Bos. Scientific Corp., 958 F. Supp. 2d 1009 (S.D. Ind. 2013) (breach of patent license agreement); Airwatch LLC v. Good Tech. Corp., No. 1:13-cv-2870-WSD, 2014 WL 1651964 (N.D. Ga. Apr. 24, 2014) (defamation); Bonnafant v. Chico’s FAS, Inc., No. 2:13-cv-893-FtM-29CM, 2014 WL 1664554 (M.D. Fla. Apr. 25, 2014) (state whistleblower legislation). In sum, federal jurisdiction is lacking here under Gunn because no federal issue is necessarily raised, because any federal issues raised are not substantial in the relevant sense, and because the resolution by federal courts of attorney malpractice claims that do not raise substantial issues of federal law would usurp the important role of state courts in regulating the practice of law within their boundaries, disrupting the federal-state balance approved by Congress. 14 NEUROREPAIR, INC. v. THE NATH LAW GROUP III. Defendants have not effectively distinguished Gunn Defendants seek to distinguish Gunn on the basis that it involved alleged malpractice within the patent litigation context while the present matter involves alleged malpractice within the patent prosecution context. Gunn made no such distinction. See 133 S. Ct. at 1066–67 (“Because of the backward-looking nature of a legal malpractice claim, the question is posed in a merely hypothetical sense.”) (emphasis added); id. at 1065 (“[S]tate legal malpractice claims based on underlying patent matters will rarely, if ever, arise under federal patent law . . . .”) (emphasis added). Accepting Defendants’ invitation to carve out a broad exception for patent prosecution malpractice would conflict with the Supreme Court’s description of such exceptions as comprising a “slim category.” Id. at 1065; see also Empire HealthChoice, 547 U.S. at 699 (describing exceptions to this rule as a “special and small category”). The number of patent-related malpractice cases considered by the Federal Circuit demonstrates that such cases have not been rare. See, e.g., Byrne, 676 F.3d at 1037 (O’Malley, J., dissenting). Defendants further attempt to distinguish Gunn by arguing that NeuroRepair’s patents were undergoing prosecution at the time of the litigation, and so any court decision with respect to the malpractice claim could have a real-world result and would not be backward-looking. However, as already explained, the outcome of this dispute is not likely to control numerous other cases. See supra Part II.C.ii. In addition, the Gunn Court considered and rejected the argument that “state courts’ answers to hypothetical patent questions can sometimes have real-world,” forward-looking effects, such as where a state court’s interpretation of claim scope impacts a USPTO examiner’s later consideration of a continuation application related to the earlier-litigated patent. 133 S. NEUROREPAIR, INC. v. THE NATH LAW GROUP 15 Ct. at 1067. In rejecting this argument, the Court expressed doubt that an examiner would be bound by a state court’s interpretation, and found in any event such effects would be “‘fact-bound and situation-specific’” and any forward-looking results would be limited to the parties and patents that had been before the state court. Id. at 1068 (quoting Empire HealthChoice, 547 U.S. at 701). Similarly, it noted that “federal courts are of course not bound by state court case-within-a-case patent rulings.” Gunn, 133 S. Ct. at 1067. Addressing what would have happened had the al- leged bad acts of Defendants not occurred requires a court to engage in precisely the sort of backward-looking, hypothetical analysis contemplated in Gunn. Exercise of federal jurisdiction is therefore improper.