No Bad Faith Assertion of Patent Unless Objectively Baseless

Judkins v. HT Window Fashion Corp., [2007-1434] (April 8, 2008) [KENNELLY, Michel, Bryson] The Federal Circuit affirmed the denial of a preliminary injunction against plaintiff’s assertion that HT’s Polaris product infringed Judkin’s patent.
SIGNIFICANCE: No matter what a party’s actual motivation; objective bad faith is required to bar a patentee from communicating about its patent rights.
BRIEF: To prevail on an unfair-competition claim under section 43(a) of the Lanham Act stemming from a patentee’s marketplace activity in support of his patent, the claimant must first establish that the activity was undertaken in bad faith. A patentee has a right to inform potential infringers of a patent and potentially infringing activity unless the communication is made in bad faith. Although bad faith in this context has both objective and subjective elements, the former is a threshold requirement: “a bad faith standard cannot be satisfied in the absence of a showing that the claims asserted were objectively baseless,” meaning no reasonable litigant could realistically expect to prevail in a dispute over infringement of the patent. The Federal Circuit said that if a district court weighing a motion to enjoin a patentee from communicating its rights determines the patent in question is not necessarily invalid or unenforceable, the objective baselessness requirement is not met, and no injunction should issue. An injunction against communication of patent rights is “strong medicine” that must be used with care and only in exceptional circumstances. The Federal Circuit found that the district court did not abuse its discretion when it denied HT’s request for a preliminary injunction.