CAFC Reverses WDWA Decision on Personal Jurisdiction

In Campbell Pet Co. v. Maile, the Federal Circuit reversed an order finding personal jurisdiction lacking over an out-of-state defendant who had attended a trade show in Seattle and made verbal threats of patent infringement litigation. This decision reverses Judge Leighton's decision finding personal jurisdiction absent under Federal Circuit law (see my previous post on this decision here, where my description of the district court's order is rather prescient).

Here is some good coverage of the decision from the PLI patent law blog:

In June 2007, Ms. Miale (hereinafter "defendant") attended a three-day convention in Seattle, Washington, sponsored by the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine. During that convention, the defendant demonstrated her products and offered them for sale. In the course of the convention, she took two orders for tables from residents of Virginia and New York, for a total purchase price of $9,400. Plaintiff Campbell also had a display at the convention featuring its products. In the course of the convention, the defendant and her mother confronted several of Campbell’s employees who were attending the convention and accused them of infringing the Miale patents.
In the month following the convention, Ty-Lift sent a letter to Campbell claiming that Campbell’s mobile folding stretcher infringed the Miale patents. Shortly thereafter, Campbell filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington seeking a declaration of noninfringement and invalidity with respect to the Miale patents. In response, Ty-Lift moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of personal jurisdiction. The district court did granted the motion to dismiss, deciding that the level of contact between the defendants and the forum state was not sufficiently “substantial” and “continuous and systematic” to justify the exercise of general jurisdiction.
The Federal Circuit agreed that the district court was clearly correct in ruling that it did not have general jurisdiction over the defendants, but did not agree that there should be no specific jurisdiction. Specifically, in order to determine whether specific jurisdiction exists the court must determine whether the defendant has purposefully established minimum contacts with the forum state: (1) whether the defendant “has purposefully directed his activities at residents of the forum”; and (2) whether “the litigation results from alleged injuries that arise out of or relate to those activities.” When considering these inquiries the district court characterized the defendants actions at the June 2007 convention as constituting nothing more than attempts to inform Campbell of suspected infringement. This determination is what the Federal Circuit took issue with and ultimately disagreed with.
Employees’ affidavits asserted that the defendant did more at the trade show than simply inform Campbell that its animal stretchers might infringe her patents. The affidavits state that the defendant attempted to have plaintiff’s allegedly infringing products removed from the convention and that she told the plaintiff's customers that the products being sold were infringing. The Federal Circuit noted that it is critically important to the issue of personal jurisdiction that the defendant's patent rants were targeted at injuring the plaintiff's business in Washington and, therefore, could fairly be characterized as attempts to limit competition at the Seattle convention. Those efforts go beyond simply informing the accused infringer of the patentee’s allegations of infringement and open the defendant up to suit in Washington.