Richard Sowinski v. California Air Resources Board

Under this Court’s settled law, the world of res judicata “comprises two distinct doctrines”—issue preclusion and claim preclusion. Lucky Brand Dungarees, Inc. v. Marcel Fashions Group, Inc., 140 S. Ct. 1589, 1594 (2020). Those two categories represent the “‘uniform federal rule[s]’ of res judicata’” (Taylor v. Sturgell, 553 U.S. 880, 891 (2008))—there is no third doctrine “unmoored from th[ose] two guideposts” (Lucky Brand, 140 S. Ct. at 1595). Except, of course, in the Federal Circuit. For years now, the Federal Circuit has adopted its own unique version of res judicata as a “necessary supplement to issue and claim preclusion.” SpeedTrack, Inc. v. Office Depot, Inc., 791 F.3d 1317, 1329 (Fed. Cir. 2015). Under this doctrine, any time a defendant prevails in an infringement action, all future infringement suits involving the same activity are barred—even if the new suit involves new issues and new claims that no court has ever resolved. The Federal Circuit has candidly acknowledged that its departure from generally applicable legal principles is “questionable” (Brain Life, LLC v. Elekta Inc., 746 F.3d 1045, 1057- 1058 (Fed. Cir. 2014)), but it believes its hands are tied by a century-old decision from this Court, and it refuses to apply traditional preclusion rules “unless and until [this] Court” says otherwise. SpeedTrack, 791 F.3d at 1329. The Federal Circuit invoked its unique rule here to preclude a second infringement suit after a first was dismissed for failure to prosecute—even though the second suit targeted only post-judgment claims and the issue of infringement was never actually litigated (much less resolved) in either action. The question presented is: Whether the Federal Circuit erred in creating and applying a patent-specific preclusion doctrine that bars new issues and new claims that would survive the “uniform” (I)