Inventor Not Allowed to Intervene in Patent Dispute

Posted on November 30, 2009 by R. David Donoghue

SP Techs., LLC v. Garmin Int'l., Inc., No. 08 C 3248, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Nov. 3, 2009) (Pallmeyer, J.).*

Judge Pallmeyer denied the individual inventor's ("Inventor) motion to intervene in this patent case.  Inventor sought to intervene in this case arguing that the assignment of his patent to plaintiff SP Technologies ("SPT") was invalid because SPT coerced Inventor to sign it.  The Court held that Inventor's argument was unpersuasive.  Inventor admitted signing the assignment, but argued it was under duress.  But the Court held that Inventor could not intervene, even if Inventor could prove the duress.  Inventor failed to explain why SPT would not adequately represent Inventor's interests in the case.  In fact, Inventor even agreed that his interests were aligned with SPT.  Intervention, therefore, was not proper.  Inventor was, however, free to pursue his claims in a separate suit against SPT.

*  Click here for more on this case in the Blog's archives.

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Corporate Defendant's Former Executive Not Allowed to Intervene in Trademark/RICO Dispute

Posted on March 29, 2007 by R. David Donoghue

Google, Inc. v. Central Mfg. Inc., No. 07 C 385, 2007 WL 789418 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 12, 2007) (Kendall, J.).

Judge Kendall denied third party Leo Stoller's motion to intervene pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 24 -- Stoller also filed a motion to interplead and various motions to suspend the proceedings for various reasons.  Plaintiff Google brought the instant suit alleging civil RICO violations based upon defendants' alleged scheme of falsely claiming trademark rights to extort money from legitimate trademark holders.  Defendants' opposed Google's application for its "Google" mark based upon allegedly fraudulent claims of common law rights in the mark in order to settle the dispute.  Stoller subsequently filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy case, which was converted to Chapter 7.  The property of Stoller's estate included wholly-owned interests in defendants.  The Court denied Stoller's motion to intervene as of right because Stoller had no "direct, significant legally protectable" interest in the case.  To the extent Stoller was involved in the underlying actions, it was as an employee of one or more of the defendants and/or acting as defendants' representative, not in his individual capacity.  Similarly, the Court denied Stoller permissive intervention because of the Court's determination that adding Stoller would unduly delay the case.  The Court noted that the parties had entered a settlement contemplating Google's release of its monetary claims, contingent upon an entry of a permanent injunction and final judgment, a settlement the be "frustrate[d]" by Stoller's intervention.

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