The Federal Circuit Heightens the Pleading Requirement for Inequitable Conduct
Sometime during grade school we learned that good journalistic writing needed to address “the five Ws”- who, what, when, where and why – and sometimes how. This is still true for good journalism. It is now also true for pleading the defense of inequitable conduct.
In Excergen Corp. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. et al. the Federal Circuit recently addressed the requirements for pleading inequitable conduct under the heightened specificity requirements of Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(b). (2006-1491, 2007-1180, August 4, 2009, http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/06-1491.pdf). The two elements of inequitable conduct are that (1) an actor within the duty of candor committed a material omission or made a materially false statement to the patent office, and (2) the omission or false statement was made with the specific intent to deceive the patent office. With respect to the first element, materiality, the Excergen court held “that in pleading inequitable conduct in patent cases, Rule 9(b) requires identification of the specific who, what, when, where and how of the material misrepresentation or omission committed before the PTO.” In addition, the Excergen court held that “a pleading of inequitable conduct under Rule 9(b), must include sufficient allegations of underlying facts from which a court may reasonably infer that a specific individual (1) knew of the withheld material information or of the falsity of the material misrepresentation , and (2) withheld or misrepresented this information with a specific intent to deceive the PTO” (emphasis added).
Under this heightened pleading standard, a general allegation against all individuals within the scope of the duty of candor, such as “Excergen, its agents and/or attorneys,” fails to address the “who” element with sufficient specificity and was deemed inadequate. In short, the court wants names (but also noted that these may be redacted from the public filing, if appropriate). For the “what” and “where” requirements, the pleading must now specifically identify not just a withheld reference, but those specific portions of the withheld reference that are considered material. General averments of “materiality” or that a reference is “not cumulative to the information already of record,” are insufficient. For materiality, the pleading now must “identify the particular claims limitations, or combination of claim limitations, that are supposedly absent from the information of record.” This, the court says, is “necessary to explain both ‘why’ the withheld information is material and not cumulative, and ‘how’ an examiner would have used this information in assessing the patentability of the claims.” Finally, the pleading must allege that the specific individual(s) identified “knew of [the] specific information that is alleged to be material [to the asserted patent] and then decided to deliberately withhold it from the relevant examiner.”
It is not news that inequitable conduct is a defense that requires pleading with specificity. Nonetheless, the heightened pleading requirements outlined in Excergen that provide a framework for meeting this requirement will be welcomed by many who view inequitable conduct as a defense that is raised too often, too early, and many times too vaguely. In practice, however, rather than significantly limiting the number of inequitable conduct allegations being made, Excergen is more likely to impact the timing and scope of these allegations. To address the five W’s (and “how”), defendants will require additional fact discovery before filing the amended pleading with the inequitable conduct defense. The allegations will still come, they will likely come later in the case and should be more thoroughly defined.
