Our Patent Case Summaries provide a weekly summary of the precedential patent-related opinions issued by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the opinions designated precedential or informative by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board.
VDPP, LLC v. Volkswagen Group of America, Inc.
No. 2024-2226 (Fed. Cir. (S.D. Tex.) Aug. 19, 2026). Opinion by Moore, joined by Lourie and Cunningham.
VDPP sued Volkswagen for infringement of a patent concerning electrically controlled spectacles. Volkswagen moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim under Rule 12(b)(6) and for improper venue. The district court dismissed the case with prejudice on the 12(b)(6) ground and denied VDPP leave to amend because the proposed amended complaint was futile. The court then awarded Volkswagen attorney fees and sanctioned VDPP’s counsel, holding VDPP and its counsel jointly and severally liable for the fees. VDPP appealed.
The Federal Circuit affirmed-in-part and dismissed-in-part. To begin, the Federal Circuit ruled that the district court did not abuse its discretion in dismissing VDPP’s complaint without granting leave to amend. VDPP sought pre-suit damages and thus “had a burden to plead compliance with the notice provision of 35 U.S.C. § 287(a), including compliance by VDPP’s licensees.” VDPP had entered into eleven settlement agreements, yet the complaint and proposed amended complaint did not allege facts showing compliance with § 287 by any of the licensees. And the Federal Circuit saw “no way for VDPP to amend its complaint to plausibly allege it made reasonable efforts to ensure its licensees complied with 35 U.S.C. § 287.”
Next, as to attorney fees, the Federal Circuit held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding the case exceptional under 35 U.S.C. § 285. The district court “reasonably determined that many of the positions VDPP took were frivolous and objectively unreasonable, including seeking future damages and an injunction on an expired patent, seeking past damages despite an inability to allege patent marking, failing to disclose relevant settlement agreements, and prolonging litigation with false statements about the settlement agreements.” The court also upheld the district court’s finding of “a need for meaningful deterrence based in part on VDPP’s pattern of repeat litigation over the [asserted] patent involving settlement demands far less than the costs of defense and unrelated to any damages theory.” The Federal Circuit ruled that the district court’s reasoning provided “ample justification” for awarding attorney fees under § 285.
Finally, the Federal Circuit dismissed the portion of the appeal concerning sanctions against VDPP’s counsel personally. The counsel “did not timely appeal on his own behalf,” and “VDPP lacks standing to contest the sanctions for him.” Thus, the Federal Circuit did not reach whether the district court abused its discretion in sanctioning him.
US Inventor, Inc., et al. v. Squires
No. 2024-2378 (Fed. Cir. (E.D. Va.) Aug. 21, 2026). Opinion by Kovner (sitting by designation), joined by Moore and Cunningham.
Several inventor-advocacy groups sued the PTO, contending that certain language on the cover of issued patents is misleading. The language states that the patent “grants to the person(s) having title to this patent the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States of America or importing the invention into the United States of America.”
The inventor-advocacy groups argued that the language assuring the patent owner of the “right to exclude” is inaccurate because of the Supreme Court’s eBay decision, which replaced the Federal Circuit’s prior practice of routinely granting permanent injunctions with the traditional “four-factor” equitable test. The district court dismissed the complaint for lack of standing and denied leave to amend, and the inventor-advocacy groups appealed.
The Federal Circuit affirmed. The court held that “Appellants have not adequately pleaded a threat of future injury from the conduct that they challenge. They have therefore failed to establish standing to seek injunctive and declaratory relief.”
The Federal Circuit explained that an organization can satisfy the standing requirements of Article III in two ways. “First, the organization can claim that it suffered an injury in its own right.” “Second, even if the organization itself suffered no injury, it can nonetheless assert standing solely as the representative of its members.” Appellants maintained that they have standing under both theories, but the Federal Circuit disagreed as to both.
Addressing organizational standing, the Federal Circuit ruled that Appellants had not established standing to seek injunctive relief “because they have not adequately pleaded a risk of future injury to the appellant organizations.” After outlining precedent from the Supreme Court, the Federal Circuit determined that Appellants did not allege the type of direct interference with core business activities that the Supreme Court has found critical, but focused on the diversion of resources that the Supreme Court has deemed inadequate.
Next, as to associational standing, two of the three Appellants could not invoke that theory because they “did not plead a theory of associational standing at all.” The remaining Appellant, however, pleaded the theory and submitted declarations from three inventor-members asserting that they were “misled by the representations on the cover of issued patents” and “assumed that there would be a right to exclude others.”
The Federal Circuit determined that this Appellant likewise lacked standing. The court explained that all three declarants acknowledge they have “now learned that the right to exclude infringers from practicing the patent invention through injunctive relief is not a legal guarantee” in the wake of eBay. The Federal Circuit thus ruled that because each of these members now knows about the eBay decision, “there is not a sufficient likelihood that he will again be wronged by the cover page language in a similar way.” “They are thus no more entitled to an injunction than any other citizen who holds a patent, and a federal court may not entertain such a claim.”