Patent Suit Pleading Standards Must Be Conformed To Supreme Court Precedents

In June, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that the heightened pleading standards of Twombly and Iqbal do not apply to claims of direct patent infringement. This decision clarified pleading issues for now, but leaves, going forward, incongruent pleading standards that require correction. Because Form 18 in the appendix to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is the cause of these disparate standards, it should be modified or eliminated without further delay.

This article originally appeared in the WLF Legal Backgrounder.