The Federal Circuit has overturned a Northern District of California judge’s dismissal of an Apple declaratory judgment action filed against Zipit Wireless, Inc. for lack of jurisdiction. At issue was whether demand letters sent by Zipit and related communications could form the basis for the exercise of personal jurisdiction over ZipIt in that district. While District Judge Edward J. Davila held that it would be unreasonable to subject ZipIt to jurisdiction there based on those contacts, the Federal Circuit disagreed in an April 18 precedential decision—holding that the lower court was wrong to apply a “bright-line rule” that such letters and communications “can never form the basis for personal jurisdiction”. This is the second time in the past year that the Federal Circuit has reached this same conclusion, potentially exposing letter-writing NPEs to greater risk of declaratory judgment actions.