The Federal Circuit Adopts a Liberal, Notice-Based Interpretation of the Relation Back Doctrine Under Rule 15(c)

In Anza Technology, Inc. v. Mushkin Inc., No. 2019-1045 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 16, 2019), the Court assessed whether claims in an amended complaint could relate back to the filing date of the original complaint. In its original complaint, Anza alleged sixteen Mushkin products infringed its ’927 patent directed to dissipative and insulative ceramic flip chip bonding tools. In the later-amended complaint, Anza dropped its claims with regard to the ’927 patent and instead alleged Mushkin infringed the ’479 and ’864 patents, also directed to dissipative ceramic bonding tools. Anza omitted ten of the original sixteen products and accused two new products.

When assessing whether the claims in Anza’s amended complaint could relate back to the filing of the original complaint, the Court adopted the Supreme Court’s liberal notice-based understanding of Rule 15(c). It assessed “the overlap of the parties, the overlap of the accused products, the underlying science and technology, time periods, and any additional factors that might suggest a commonality or lack of commonality between the two sets of claims.” Slip Op. at 16.

When applied to the facts before it, the Court held, although the patents asserted in the original and amended complaints were different and addressed different bonding techniques, they still shared the same underlying technology and focused on solving the same problem by the same solution. And, because the use of bonding tool tips made of dissipative material was the basis for the infringement claims in both the original and the amended complaint, the Court concluded the “aggregate of operative facts” underlying the original complaint gave notice to the defendant of the substance of the infringement claims set forth in the amended complaint. Thus, for products accused in both the original and amended complaints, the Court held the amended complaint sufficiently related back to the original complaint. For products introduced for the first time in the amended complaint, however, the Court remanded for the district court to assess in the first instance whether the amended complaint should relate back to the date of the original complaint.