A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: With Prejudice

AI-generated depiction of Judge Andrews putting down zombie claims for good.
AI-generated depiction of Judge Andrews putting down zombie claims for good. AI-Generated, displayed with permission

Former Chief Judge Sleet used to frequently say that "there is no such thing as the law of the district." Genentech, Inc. v. Amgen Inc., No. 17-1407-GMS, 2018 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 9544, at *8 n.3 (D. Del. Jan. 22, 2018) (cleaned up). In other words, one district court judge's ruling is not binding on another.

We saw that yesterday, when Judge Andrews held that claims dropped due to claim narrowing are dropped with prejudice, and recognized that another of our judges had previously held the opposite on similar facts.

In Exeltis USA, Inc. v. Lupin Ltd., C.A. No. 22-434-RGA (D. …

Dollar Bills
Sharon McCutcheon, Unsplash

In DivX, LLC v. Realtek Semiconductor Corp., C.A. No. 20-1202-JLH (D. Del.), the parties disputed whether the case should be dismissed with or without prejudice after the plaintiff moved to dismiss its own case.

The defendant responded, opposing dismissal without prejudice and arguing that a with-prejudice dismissal was warranted under a four-factor test used in previous cases (which focuses mainly on effort and expense of the present and potential future litigation, progress of the present litigation, and diligence in moving to dismiss). Id., D.I. 74 at 9.

The defendant argued that plaintiff had filed an ITC action against it, resulting in millions of dollars in fees. Id. at 12.

The Court didn't …

Dart in Target
Silvan Arnet, Unsplash

Both parties in Wrinkl, Inc. v. Meta Platforms Inc., C.A. No. 20-1345-RGA (D. Del.) agreed that the case should be dismissed after the PTAB invalidated 50 of the 54 asserted claims, but disagreed about whether the remaining 4 claims should be dismissed with prejudice.

The plaintiff claimed that it did not intend to assert the remaining claims, but that it should retain the right to, and that it is unaware of caselaw holding that the Court cannot dismiss some claims with prejudice and some without.

The defendant argued that the Court cannot split up the claims, and must dismiss all or nothing with prejudice:

Defendants contend there is no legal support or precedent …