Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge recently filed a friend-of-the-court brief, asking for the existing law which governs patent cases jurisdiction be abolished. The Federal Circuit has reached the right decision this week but left the law unchanged.
EFF and Public Knowledge are both American non-profit organizations and concern primarily on protecting individuals or organizations fundamental rights regardless of technology in courts. These organizations used the recent patent law case to ask Federal Circuit to overturn the rule. The patent law case on trial is the Xilinx v Papst. The brief is filed on behalf of the Xilinx.
Xilinx is a Delaware corporation headquartered in California. It designs, develops, and markets programmable logic devices for use in electronics systems, while Papst is a Germany-based company which solely monetized and licensed intellectual property rights. Papst accused Xilinx of infringing a patent on a memory test in electronics. It sent patent-infringement notice letters to Xilinx several times and offered further discussion or settlement by paying the license fee.
Papst's representative even visited Xilinx. Xilinx resisted by filing a lawsuit in the northern district of California claiming that they did not infringe and that the patent is invalid.
But the filing of a patent case against Papst which is a company based abroad raises two inquiries: First, does California has a long-arm statute to prosecute a company outside the United States, and is the assertion of personal jurisdiction violates due process? Papst at the same time filed a lawsuit against Xilinx in the District of Delaware. Papst motioned that the case in California be dismissed and it was dismissed for a lack of personal jurisdiction.
Xilinx appealed, finally the decision was reversed and the court decided that California has personal jurisdiction over Papst. But EFF was not satisfied since although the decision favored Xilinx. It does not change the usual patent law that trolls can still drag the target company to be litigated in their area of preferences.
Patent trolls are considered by critics such as EFF and Public Knowledge as legally sanctioned extortion. Patent trolls often do not manufacture or supply services, just like Papst they solely monetized and licensed intellectual property rights.
In EFF's friend-of-the-court brief, they argued that the Federal Circuit should overrule the existing patent law where the company being demanded to pay for patent troll can't sue them in their own district. And that the case might not be litigated anywhere else that the patent owner has always gain favors.
