Court Opinion

ID: 9392532
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-05-05 14:01:06.032153+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:18:46.473735
License: Public Domain

Case: 23-1257   Document: 22     Page: 1    Filed: 05/05/2023

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                 ______________________

                   LARRY GOLDEN,
                   Plaintiff-Appellant

                            v.

                INTEL CORPORATION,
                   Defendant-Appellee
                 ______________________

                       2023-1257
                 ______________________

    Appeal from the United States District Court for the
 Northern District of California in No. 5:22-cv-03828-NC,
 Magistrate Judge Nathanael M. Cousins.
                 ______________________

                  Decided: May 5, 2023
                 ______________________

    LARRY GOLDEN, Greenville, SC, pro se.

     WILLIAM FAULKNER, McManis Faulkner, San Jose, CA,
 for defendant-appellee. Also represented by MATTHEW
 SCHECHTER.
                 ______________________

    Before MOORE, Chief Judge, DYK and REYNA, Circuit
                         Judges.
Case: 23-1257    Document: 22     Page: 2     Filed: 05/05/2023

 2                              GOLDEN   v. INTEL CORPORATION

 PER CURIAM.
      Larry Golden appeals an order of the United States
 District Court for the Northern District of California dis-
 missing his patent infringement and antitrust complaint
 for failure to state a claim for patent infringement and for
 lack of standing. We affirm.
                        BACKGROUND
     Mr. Golden owns a family of patents concerning a sys-
 tem for locking, unlocking, or disabling a lock on vehicles
 or other apparatuses upon the detection of chemical, radi-
 ological, and biological hazards. 1 Mr. Golden has previ-
 ously unsuccessfully asserted patent claims regarding
 these patents against other defendants. See, e.g., Golden
 v. Apple Inc., Nos. 22-1229, 22-1267, 2022 WL 4103285
 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 8, 2022); Golden v. United States, No. 22-
 1196, 2022 WL 4103287 (Fed. Cir. Sept. 8, 2022).
     Mr. Golden brought the present action against Intel
 Corporation on June 28, 2022, alleging patent infringe-
 ment and related antitrust violations. Intel moved to dis-
 miss Mr. Golden’s infringement claims for failure to state
 a claim under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil
 Procedure, and his antitrust claims for lack of Article III
 and antitrust standing under Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6),
 respectively. 2 The district court granted the motion,

     1    The patents at issue in this case are U.S. Patent
 Nos. 7,385,497 (’497 patent), 8,106,752 (’752 patent),
 9,096,189 (’189 patent), 9,589,439 (’439 patent), 10,163,287
 (’287 patent), 10,984,619 (’619 patent), and RE43,891
 (’891 patent). S.A. 2; S.A. 41.
     2    Antitrust standing is not jurisdictional, and, ac-
 cordingly, the proper basis for dismissing a claim for lack
 of antitrust standing is Rule 12(b)(6). See Gerlinger v. Am-
 azon.com Inc., 526 F.3d 1253, 1256 (9th Cir. 2008) (“Lack
Case: 23-1257     Document: 22       Page: 3    Filed: 05/05/2023

 GOLDEN   v. INTEL CORPORATION                                3

 dismissing Mr. Golden’s         complaint     with   prejudice.
 Mr. Golden appeals.
                          DISCUSSION
                                 I
      The district court held that Mr. Golden lacked both Ar-
 ticle III standing and antitrust standing under Section 2 of
 the Sherman Act to bring his antitrust claims. To have Ar-
 ticle III standing, a plaintiff must establish (1) an actual,
 concrete injury, that is (2) fairly traceable to the defend-
 ant’s conduct and (3) likely to be redressed by a favorable
 decision. Lujan Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560–61
 (1992). To enforce Section 2 of the Sherman Act, a plaintiff
 must have antitrust standing, for which the Supreme
 Court has identified several factors: “(1) the nature of the
 plaintiff’s alleged injury; that is, whether it was the type
 [of injury] the antitrust laws were intended to forestall;
 (2) the directness of the injury; (3) the speculative measure
 of the harm; (4) the risk of duplicative recovery; and (5) the
 complexity in apportioning damages.” Am. Ad Mgmt., Inc.
 v. Gen. Tel. Co. of Cal., 190 F.3d 1051, 1055 (9th Cir. 1999)
 (citations omitted) (summarizing factors identified in Asso-
 ciated Gen. Contractors of Cal., Inc. v. Cal. State Council of
 Carpenters, 459 U.S. 519, 535 (1983)). Moreover, “[p]arties
 whose injuries, though flowing from that which makes the
 defendant’s conduct unlawful, are experienced in another
 market do not suffer antitrust injury.” Am. Ad Mgmt., 190
 F.3d at 1057.
     Mr. Golden alleges in conclusory fashion that by in-
 fringing his patents, Intel has monopolized the U.S.

 of antitrust standing affects a plaintiff’s ability to recover,
 but does not implicate the subject matter jurisdiction of the
 court.”). Intel’s motion properly moved for dismissal for
 lack of antitrust standing under Rule 12(b)(6).
Case: 23-1257     Document: 22      Page: 4    Filed: 05/05/2023

 4                               GOLDEN   v. INTEL CORPORATION

 market in laptops, desktop PCs, and CPUs and has en-
 gaged in other unlawful action that has prevented him
 from entering that market. For example, Mr. Golden ar-
 gues that “Intel’s actions of using, making, offering for sale,
 and selling [his] patented inventions, together with other
 exclusionary conduct including unlawful bundling and loy-
 alty discounts, impeded the adoption of [his] new, improved
 upon, and useful CMDC [communicating, monitoring, de-
 tecting, and controlling] devices (i.e., laptops, desktop PCs),
 and central processing units (CPUs).” S.A. 27. Mr. Golden
 suggests that “Intel’s exclusionary anticompetitive prac-
 tices made it possible for Intel to maintain its monopoly.”
 S.A. 30.
     We agree with the district court that Mr. Golden’s
 vague, conclusory allegations as to antitrust violations
 (without specifically identifying the supposed illegal con-
 duct) and allegations of injury (again without specifying
 the specific injury) are not adequate to allege either Article
 III standing or antitrust injury. Accordingly, the district
 court did not err in dismissing Mr. Golden’s antitrust
 claims for lack of standing.
                               II
     The district court dismissed Mr. Golden’s patent in-
 fringement claims for failing to state a claim. 3 Rule
 12(b)(6) “require[s] well-pleaded facts, not legal conclu-
 sions, that ‘plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief.’”
 Whitaker v. Tesla Motors, Inc., 985 F.3d 1173, 1176 (9th

     3    The district court also dismissed Mr. Golden’s un-
 just enrichment claims for failing to state a claim, because
 unjust enrichment is not recognized under California law
 as a separate cause of action. The district court did not err
 in this conclusion. See McBride v. Boughton, 123 Cal. App.
 4th 379, 387 (2004).
Case: 23-1257      Document: 22      Page: 5     Filed: 05/05/2023

 GOLDEN   v. INTEL CORPORATION                                   5

 Cir. 2021) (quoting Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 679
 (2009)) (citing Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570
 (2007)). Though a plaintiff “need not ‘prove its case at the
 pleading stage’ [and] . . . is not required to plead infringe-
 ment on an element-by-element basis . . . a plaintiff cannot
 assert a plausible claim for infringement . . . by reciting the
 claim elements and merely concluding that the accused
 product has those elements.” Bot M8 LLC v. Sony Corp. of
 Am., 4 F.4th 1342, 1352–53 (Fed. Cir. 2021) (quoting Nalco
 Co. v. Chem-Mod, LLC, 883 F.3d 1337, 1350 (Fed. Cir.
 2018)).
     Mr. Golden’s complaint is deficient. It does not even
 make conclusory allegations of infringement, much less al-
 legations to satisfy the Iqbal standard. Like Mr. Golden’s
 complaint in one of the earlier consolidated Apple cases
 (No. 22-1229), Mr. Golden’s complaint here provides “noth-
 ing more than a list of patent claims and accused products
 manufactured by [the] defendant for each asserted patent.”
 Apple, 2022 WL 4103285, at *2. Indeed, his claim charts
 omit key language from the identified claims that would be
 essential for proving infringement, suggesting, for example
 that his patents cover generic PCs and CPUs, with no lim-
 itations. See, e.g., S.A. 19 (“Claim 1 of the ‘619 Patent: A
 communication device that is at least a personal computer
 (PC), a cellphone, a smartphone, a laptop, or a handheld
 scanner, comprising at least a central processing unit
 (CPU), capable of . . . processing instructions . . . [.]” (ellip-
 ses in original)). His claim charts identify allegedly in-
 fringing products, in some cases with nothing more than
 pictures, see S.A. 18, 19, 34, in others, with pictures and
 generic product descriptions that are not tied to any claim
 limitations in the asserted claims, see S.A. 32–33, 35–37.
     The complaint here is unlike the complaint in the sec-
 ond Apple case (No. 22-1267), which “include[d] a detailed
 claim chart mapping features of an accused product . . . to
 independent claims from [the asserted patents].” Apple,
Case: 23-1257      Document: 22       Page: 6    Filed: 05/05/2023

 6                                GOLDEN   v. INTEL CORPORATION

 2022 WL 4103285, at *2. The conclusory allegations in this
 case are insufficient to identify what products infringe and
 how those products infringe Mr. Golden’s patents and, ac-
 cordingly, fail to “place [Intel] on notice of what activity . . .
 is being accused of infringement.” Bot M8 LLC, 4 F.4th at
 1352 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
                                III
     Finally, Mr. Golden argues that the district court erred
 by dismissing his complaint with prejudice. Mr. Golden
 has not explained in his briefing why it would not be futile
 for him to amend his complaint. Mr. Golden’s complaint
 appears to suggest he believes he has broad patent claims
 covering general Central Processing Units (CPUs) and lap-
 top and desktop PCs, see, e.g., S.A. 12 (¶ 10); S.A. 24–25
 (¶ 43), but the claims are not for CPUs or PCs, but for ones
 that can perform specific functions. Mr. Golden has not ar-
 gued how he could amend his complaint to identify specific
 Intel products that infringe his patent claims. Accordingly,
 we do not think the district court abused its discretion in
 dismissing Mr. Golden’s complaint with prejudice.
                          AFFIRMED