CAFC Affirms ITC in Coax Connectors Sec. 337 Claim: Patent Litigation Alone is not "Domestic Industry"
A patent holder for a design of coaxial cable connectors (John Mezzalingua Associates, Inc. dba PPC, Inc.) lost an appeal of a section 337 ruling by the International Trade Commission that held that spending funds on patent infringement litigation does…
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not amount to investing in a domestic manufacturing industry. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit noted that Section 337 only protects against infringement of valid and enforceable U.S. patents by imports if a domestic U.S. industry “exists or is in the process of being established,” as shown by investment in plant, equipment, labor, capital, engineering, R & D, or licensing. PPC claimed it incurred litigation costs to protect its patents for the purpose of later seeking license deals. The court conceded that some enforcement litigation costs may support a finding that a domestic licensing industry exists, but agreed with the ITC that "allowing patent infringement litigation activities alone to constitute a domestic industry would place the bar…so low as to effectively render it meaningless." (Appeal No. 2010-1536, dated 10/04/11)