Morris & Associates, Inc. v. John Bean Technologies Corporation

In Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, Inc., 134 S.Ct. 1962 (2014), and SCA Hygiene Prods. Aktiebolag v. First Quality Baby Prods., LLC, 137 S.Ct. 954 (2017), this Court held that laches is unavailable to bar actions for copyright and patent infringement brought within the respective statutes of limitation. In these cases, however, this Court noted that in contrast to laches, equitable estoppel remains a viable equitable remedy “long recognized as available in actions at law” against “unscrupulous patentees” where there is “misleading and consequent loss.” For over a century, this Court and the Federal Circuit have held that a finding of equitable estoppel gives an accused infringer an implied license to a patented invention for the life of the patent, thereby constituting a waiver of the right to sue by the patentee. Yet for the first time, the Federal Circuit panel held that an implied license arising by equitable estoppel does not extend to the entire patented invention, but is instead restricted on a claimby-claim basis to exclude claims added or substantially amended through ex parte reexamination, resulting in the implied license applying to select individual claims of a patent but not all. The two questions presented are: 1. Whether the Federal Circuit erred and contradicted a century of this Court’s licensing precedent in holding that implied license rights to a patent arising in equity, particularly equitable estoppel, do not attach to the entire patented invention but instead attach only to a subset of the patent’s individual claims?