Context: An ex parte preliminary injunction recently issued in the gallium nitride (GaN) patent dispute between German chipmaker Infineon and China’s Innoscience (June 16, 2024 ip fray article; updated on June 21, 2024 with Infineon’s denial of having sent Innoscience the wrong way).
What’s new: In the U.S. part of the dispute, Innoscience’s lawyers brought a motion to dismiss on Monday (Pacific Time), which Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California quickly denied without prejudice. Innoscience may refile after a meet-and-confer. This judge is presently busy with a criminal trial and therefore requires meet-and-confer as a prerequisite even to routine motions.
Direct impact: Two of the three issues raised by Innoscience’s motion criticize Infineon’s complaint for a lack of granularity with respect to what allegations concern what legal entities and what products. It may be in Infineon’s interest to cure any of the alleged deficiencies with or without a formal obligation to do so, just to narrow the issues to be put before the court.
Wider ramifications: The third part of the motion to dismiss is, however, debatable. On the same day, the Federal Circuit held in its precedential Amarin v. Hikma opinion (PDF) that public statements may lend plausibility to allegations of induced infringement. Infineon may want to stand its ground in that regard.
There was a flurry of activity on the Infineon v. Innoscience docket in N.D. Cal. yesterday. Innoscience’s lawyers from Finnegan (first signatory: Sneha Nyshadham) made multiple filings, starting with a motion to dismiss:
Innoscience wants Infineon to specify which of its allegations concern which of about 30 products and which of three different legal entities. They also argue that there is no claim for induced infringement.
They also declined to proceed before a United States Magistrate Judge, as a result of which the case was assigned to Oakland-based Judge Gonzalez Rogers, who may not be very well known in the patent law community but has presided over some very important technology industry cases, particularly Epic Games’ and some other parties’ actions against Apple over its App Store terms. ip fray‘s sibling site games fray has mentioned her many times (most recently, June 13, 2024 games fray article).
The case number changed to 4:24-cv-01553-YGR (4 stands for the Oakland Division).
Judge YGR (as she is often referred to by her initials) is always very busy, but at the moment she has to preside over a criminal trial, which led her to impose certain rules on parties to civil proceedings, among them a meet-and-confer duty even with respect to routine motions. By the time Innoscience filed its motion to dismiss, it couldn’t even know which federal judge in the district the case would be referred to. Judge YGR gave the motion short shrift for now, dismissing without prejudice (meaning it can be refiled later) for failure to meet and confer and because there still is, even if just theoretically, the possibility that Infineon and Innoscience may agree to proceed before a United States Magistrate Judge of their choice:
It’s obvious that Innoscience, like almost all defendants to patent infringement lawsuits, is not interested in speedy proceedings. For them it’s actually a blessing that the case was referred to such a busy judge. They must already have been very happy that Infineon elected to sue in the Northern District of California as many other patent holders go out of their way to litigate cases anywhere in the United States but there, and defendants with a strong connection with that district almost always try to have their cases transferred to Northern California. Proceedings tend to be slow there, and pretrial decisions are generally less favorable to patentees than in some other districts.
What about the merits of the motion?
In principle, the first two parts appear reasonable and Infineon may opt to amend its complaint for the sake of greater clarity about the many-to-many relationships here (allegations, parties, products). If Infineon makes a reasonable effort to address Innoscience’s criticism, the busy judge presiding over this lawsuit will appreciate it.
The question of whether the standard for inducement is met is a more difficult one. It’s possible that Infineon can also improve that part by voluntarily amending the complaint, but much less likely than in the other two respects that the parties can work this out without requiring a decision from the court. Moreover, Innoscience may want to bring a motion to dismiss (provided that it is at least somewhat reasonable) for the purpose of delaying the proceedings.
The 19-page motion to dismiss must have been weeks in the making, and does not mention yesterday’s Amarin decision, which may, however, become a subject of discussion when the parties meet and confer. At first glance, Amarin may strengthen Infineon’s position. At minimum, it does so at an abstract level. Should Innoscience insist on the dismissal of the claims over induced infringement, a new motion to dismiss will be inevitable, involving a briefing process, a hearing and a ruling by this busy judge.