January 2014

Spotlight Info

In Suprema, Inc. v. International Trade Commission, Nos. 12-1170, -1026, -1124 (Fed. Cir.
Dec. 13, 2013), the Federal Circuit vacated a cease and desist order, vacated a limited exclusion order barring importation of optical scanning devices in part, and remanded so that the ITC’s order could be revised to bar only a subset of the scanners-at-issue that infringed at the time of importation.  The Court affirmed a separate ITC order refusing to find a violation of § 337 with respect to some of the same optical scanners.  As its basis for vacating the limited exclusion order in part, the Court held that “an exclusion order based on a violation of 19 U.S.C.
§ 1337(a)(1)(B)(i) may not be predicated on a theory of induced infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b) where direct infringement does not occur until after importation of the articles the exclusion order would bar.”  Slip op. at 4.  See this month’s edition of Last Month at the Federal Circuit for a full summary of this decision.