Future of Patent Licensing Deals on the Line at Federal Circuit

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC is set to rule on whether a patent owner who gives the ability to sublicense a patent can still sue another for infringement in a case that could have implications for other litigation funding transactions, after judges in Delaware and the Northern District of California ruled that Uniloc – which defaulted on a Fortress loan it used to pay for lawsuits against Motorola, Apple and Google, triggering a provision in the deal that ceded its patent sublicensing rights to Fortress – no longer had exclusionary rights to the patents and thus didn’t have legal standing to sue. Read more.