Enhanced Pleading Standards For Patent Infringement Actions In The United States

Keywords: patent, infringement,

Amendments to the US Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that will abolish its appendix of form pleadings become effective on December 1, 2015. The amendments, which were approved by the Supreme Court in April, may have the effect of creating stricter pleading standards for complaints of direct patent infringement.

Parties alleging patent infringement will now need to adhere to the requirements set forward in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly,550 U.S. 544 (2007), and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009). Under the Twombly and Iqbal standards, a complaint must set forward "sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim that is plausible on its face" and that "allows the court to draw the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged."

Background

The appendix to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure includes about three dozen exemplary form pleadings for specific causes of action. The Form 18 pleading for patent infringement only requires a plaintiff to (i) plead that the court in which the complaint is filed has jurisdiction; (ii) plead that it is the sole owner of an issued US patent; (iii) plead that a class of products made, sold or used by the defendant infringes the issued patent; and (iv) state a demand for damages and/or injunctive relief. Form 18 has been criticized for not providing infringement defendants with sufficient notice and for enabling mass-filing of form complaints without adequate factual support.

The form pleadings in the Federal Rules were consistent with the earlier pleading standards articulated in Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41 (1957). In Conley the Supreme Court noted that "The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not require a claimant to set out in detail the facts upon which he bases his claim. To the contrary, all the Rules require is 'a short and plain statement of the claim' that will give the defendant fair notice of what the plaintiff's claim is and the grounds upon which it rests."

The Conley pleading standard was revised in 2007 in Twombly, where the Supreme Court held that "allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level" and rejected a "a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause" as insufficient. This standard was further clarified in Iqbal, which held that to "survive a motion to dismiss a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to 'state a claim to relief that is...