Posts Tagged: "double jeopardy"

SCOTUS Says Retrials are Appropriate Remedy in Improper Venue Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court today delivered a ruling that flows from a trade secrets theft case, holding that “the Constitution permits the retrial of a defendant following a trial in an improper venue conducted before a jury drawn from the wrong district.” The underlying case involves a software engineer, Timothy Smith, who stole trade secrets from StrikeLines, a company that uses proprietary technology to identify private, artificial reefs that individuals construct to attract fish and then sells the coordinates. Smith, an avid fisherman, was angered by this approach as he felt StrikeLines was profiting off of the work of private citizens. He therefore figured out how to obtain StrikeLines’ data and announced on social media that he was willing to share it.

Eileen McDermott

June 15, 2023

Double jeopardy at the PTAB forces Allergan and others to seek sovereign immunity defenses

The PTAB subjects all patent owners to double jeopardy, but the situation is particularly bad for pharmaceutical companies which already have to face a Congressionally-mandated validity review process under the Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act, colloquially known as Hatch-Waxman. This law creates a regime by which a generic drugmaker can file an abbreviated new drug application (ANDA) with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The branded pharmaceutical listed in the Orange Book will be covered by patents but the generic drugmaker can include a Paragraph IV certification in the ANDA, a declaration that the patents covering the Orange Book-listed drug are unenforceable and invalid. When a company like Allergan has to face Hatch-Waxman validity trials in federal district court and serial IPRs at the PTAB, it turns Allergan’s Restasis patents into piñatas taking hit after hit at multiple forums before being finally ripped asunder at some point.

Steve Brachmann

November 2, 2017