Supreme Court Denies Hearing on Whether Legal Costs Satisfy Industry Prong of Patent Cases

Without comment, the Supreme Court denied John Mezzalingua Associates’ bid for a hearing of its appeal of an International Trade Commission patent case and subsequent Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmance of the ITC’s decision. Mezzalingua had claimed it incurred litigation costs to protect its patents for the purpose of later seeking license deals, and so satisfied the domestic industry prong of Section 337 investigations. CAFC agreed with the ITC that the litigation costs do not satisfy the domestic industry requirement, saying that "allowing patent infringement litigation activities alone to constitute a domestic industry would place the bar…so low as to effectively render it meaningless."