Two textbook cases on how to win an injunction. And what to make of the Federal Circuit's new "mandamus light" procedure?

Texas is home to over 40% of all patent litigation. And with that many on-going cases, important changes happen weekly. To keep you updated, Michael Smith, author of the award winning edtexweblog.com, shares both his research and his local perspective about what's happening around the entire state.  

 

SPEAKERS

Wayne Stacy, Michael Smith

 

Wayne Stacy  00:00

Welcome, everyone to this week's podcast for the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, The Last Week in Texas. With us today is Michael Smith from Scheef & Stone. And you everybody knows of course, Michael is the author of the leading blog in the nation on the happenings in Texas. So, Michael, tell us what's going on this week?

 

Michael Smith  00:25

Well, Wayne, what's interesting this past week is we often talk about the Eastern District in the Western District of Texas. But this past week, the most interesting opinions came out of the Southern District, and the Northern District, basically Houston, and then Dallas and parts north and, and West, and they didn't have trials, but they had a number of rulings granting injunctive relief, dismissing patent infringement cases making claim construction rulings, a lot of things that I think are interest interesting to our listeners, because they talk about the sort of evidentiary issues and evidentiary challenges that we're confronted with in IP and tech cases.

 

Wayne Stacy  01:07

Well, let's just start with the Northern District.

 

Michael Smith  01:09

Well, the the first case, I wanted to mention the Northern District is an opinion by Judge Boyle. Now it's it's a, it's a pretty interesting case, there's a restaurant in Dallas that has a certain name, and a new restaurant came out and had a similar name. And the first restaurant thought that they had a reputation for bad health standards, bad food rude service. So they asked for an injunction keeping them from using that term. And the judge goes through the elements and determines Yes, you've you've met the standard for injunctive relief. And that's kind of unusual, because it's hard to get injunctive relief. At the front of a case I had judge Ward one time referred to it on a call as he was telling the parties Well, you know, the sun might come up in the West this morning. But that was kind of his analogy to how likely it was you could get injunctive relief in a patent case. So it's useful to see somebody actually put the right evidence on in this trademark case.

 

Wayne Stacy  02:08

Well, I tell you, when I when I read this case, a couple things stuck out. First of all, it was a battle between Houston and Dallas, you know, these two restaurants had had their locations for many years. And in Dallas and Houston, in when one was coming into the Dallas market. That's what caused the fight. So it's an interesting trademark reminder about the geographic scope. But what really struck me about this case, was that the plaintiff put on maybe the best organized evidence I've seen in an injunction case, you know, if you're going to show confusion, and irreparable harm, this plaintiff went through and showed great social media records, Yahoo, Yelp, Google records, phone records, and all backed by affidavits. So when you read, when you really read the judicial opinion, it's seen that the court was impressed not only by the weight of the evidence, but by the quality and the presentation style. So to me, it shows you what you got to do to win an injunction case. You just hope to do evidence righ