by Dennis Crouch
Bunzl Processor Distribution v. Kappos (Fed. Cir. 2012) (nonprecedential order)
Bunzl and Bettcher are in a longstanding battle over the exclusive rights to make and sell a rotary knife blade used in meat processing. The patents include Bettcher’s Patent Nos. 7,000,325 and 8,074,363 and the pending lawsuits include three district court cases and an inter partes reexamination.
The ‘325 infringement lawsuit and the parallel inter partes reexamination were filed in 2008. Bunzl recently filed a declaratory judgment action on the newly issued ‘363 patent.
Bettcher is winning the reexamination. The USPTO Board of Appeals recently re-affirmed the examiner’s decision to confirm the patentability of the pending claims. Bunzl initially won the infringement lawsuit, but after being partially reversed on appeal, that case appears to be headed for a new trial in the near future.
In light of the pending infringement trial, Bunzl asked the Federal Circuit to stay the reexamination appeal proceedings so that the whole case could be appealed at once. In a short non-precedential opinion, Judge Newman has rejected that plea. She writes:
The power of the Court to stay proceedings is incidental to its inherent power to control the disposition of the cases on its docket. See Landis v. North Am. Co., 299 U.S. 248, 254 (1936). Here, we cannot say Bunzl has shown that staying proceedings for such a lengthy period of time is warranted.
Thus, the cases will continue in parallel. The appellate briefs will likely be due before the trial and jury verdict. The appellate decision will then likely issue around the same time as the judge’s post-verdict order on the inevitable motions. There is a likelihood that the results from the two bodies will be inconsistent. However, our system has a fairly consistent approach to determining the hierarchy of decision in patent cases.
Parallel patent proceedings within the US have created a whole new set of litigation strategies and difficulties. Of course, those strategies will change once again in the coming years as we implement the new post grant review proceedings of the AIA.
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Note: In this order, Judge Newman was the sole decision maker acting in her role as motions judge for the month.
