Opinion ID: 2822000
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: “Clear Error” or “Manifest Injustice”

Text: Finally, looking briefly at the merits of Motorola’s current jurisdictional argument, there was no “clear error” or “manifest injustice” in concluding that the RAND bench trial did not transform this case into a matter necessarily requiring the resolution of a substantial question of federal patent law. See Christianson, 486 U.S. at 809, 817; Arizona v. California, 460 U.S. 605, 618 n.8 (1983). A complaint that alleges breach of contract and seeks damages sounds in contract; its nature “does not change because the contract is a patent license.” See Bonzel v. Pfizer, Inc., 439 F.3d 1358, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2006); see also Barnhart v. W. Md. Ry. Co., 128 F.2d 709, 714 (4th Cir. 1942) (collecting Supreme Court cases). Even if a court, in interpreting a contract and assessing damages, “deems it appropriate to apply the law of patent infringement, that of itself does not change the complaint into one arising under the patent law.” Bonzel, 439 F.3d at 1363; see also Complex Litigation Committee of the American College of Trial Lawyers, Anatomy of a Patent Case Ch.16.I.A.1. (2d ed. 2012) (“Anatomy of a Patent Case”) (explaining that application of patent law for purposes of determining MICROSOFT CORP. V. MOTOROLA, INC. 23 damages “does not by itself present a substantial issue of patent law”). Motorola points out that the Federal Circuit has exercised jurisdiction in some breach-of-contract cases. See Parental Guide of Tex., Inc. v. Thomson, Inc., 446 F.3d 1265 (Fed. Cir. 2006); U.S. Valves, Inc. v. Dray, 212 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 2000); Portney v. CIBA Vision Corp., 401 F. App’x 526 (Fed. Cir. 2010). But those cases involved questions of patent infringement, patent validity, or claim construction, or included an embedded, outcome-determinative interpretation of a patent law statute. See Anatomy of a Patent Case Ch.16.I.A.1. (2d ed. 2012). This case, in contrast, is a straight breach of contract action. Calculation of appropriate royalty amounts in contractual patent license cases involves similar determinations to those that arise when calculating damages in patent infringement cases. So there is some overlap in that regard between breach of patent license cases and Federal Circuit patent infringement cases. But Motorola has cited no case in which the Federal Circuit has exercised jurisdiction over a breach of contract claim for damages where the mode of calculating contract damages, not any pure patent issue, was at stake. In sum, there was no “clear error[]” or “manifest injustice” that would justify disrupting ours and the Federal Circuit’s prior determinations that we have jurisdiction. Christianson, 486 U.S. at 817. Nor is any other exception to the law-of-the-case doctrine applicable. We therefore reject Motorola’s challenge to our jurisdiction. 24 MICROSOFT CORP. V. MOTOROLA, INC.