In June 2022, the Federal Circuit overturned a $2.7B judgment for the plaintiff in Centripetal Networks v. Cisco, based on the failure of the presiding judge to recuse himself after he learned that his wife owned stock in the defendant. Similar attempts to reverse judgments due to purported conflicts of interest soon followed—including one from plaintiff CellSpin Soft Inc. Early last year, Northern District of California Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers forcefully denied a motion to recuse in which CellSpin asserted that a ruling of noninfringement against Alphabet (Google) should be undone because the judge held interests in index funds that invested in the defendant, and due to alleged conflicts stemming from her husband’s employment. The Federal Circuit has now stepped in, upholding the judge’s rejection of that motion—though the appellate court did so primarily based on the plaintiff’s failure to raise the issue early enough. That delay, the Federal Circuit found, “raises obvious concerns of lack of equity and strategic misuse of recusal”.

The litigation campaign of CellSpin Soft, Inc., launched in 2017 against 14 different defendants, has twice been stalled by trips to the Federal Circuit. The first time, the appellate court reversed an Alice invalidation, ginning activity back up—until last June when Northern District of California District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers granted summary judgment of noninfringement. An appeal of that decision is underway. Now, CellSpin Soft has sued one of those 14 defendants again, accusing Panasonic (4:17-cv-05941) of infringing six patents from the same family but not previously litigated. However, the new complaint, like CellSpin’s last one, has not been filed in the Northern District of California.

Last year, the Federal Circuit made waves with its June 2022 Centripetal Networks v. Cisco decision, which overturned a $2.7B judgment because the district judge discovered his wife’s ownership of stock in the defendant but failed to recuse himself. In recent weeks, some plaintiffs have tried to leverage that opinion in their own litigation—but now, two of those attempts have fallen flat. In the Northern District of California, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected a motion for recusal from CellSpin Soft Inc., which she hit with a noninfringement ruling this past June, as a meritless “attack on the integrity of the judiciary” that showed a “measure of desperation”. The order came soon after the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) denied another such recusal motion, this one from Centripetal Networks, as similarly “lacking in substance” and “baseless”—holding that an administrative patent judge (APJ) owned a small enough interest in joined copetitioner Cisco that he was not required to recuse himself under the applicable regulations.

Last June, the Federal Circuit overturned a bench trial infringement ruling that had led to a $2.7B judgment in Centripetal Networks v. Cisco. The appellate court held that the district judge was disqualified to hear the case after he learned that his wife owned of $5K in the stock of defendant Cisco but then failed to recuse himself. That decision now appears to be having a broader ripple effect: plaintiff Centripetal Networks has raised a similar issue before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), asserting that an inter partes review (IPR) against one of the tried patents has been “tainted” by an administrative patent judge’s (APJ’s) ownership of Cisco stock and other purported financial interests in the company. Meanwhile, in another campaign, plaintiff CellSpin Soft, Inc. has argued that a June 2022 summary judgment of noninfringement should be overturned due to a Northern District of California district judge’s alleged interest in Google, the parent of defendant Fitbit. The Centripetal decision has also been invoked in a closely watched fight over transparency in the courtroom of Delaware Chief Judge Colm F. Connolly, under which certain amici have contended that patent litigants must disclose their ownership/management and funding sources to allow judges to perform a proper conflicts check.

Northern District of California Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has granted summary judgment of noninfringement to a group of defendants sued by CellSpin Soft, Inc. back in 2017: Alphabet (Fitbit), Fossil, Garmin, Nike, Nikon, and Under Armour. The court ruled that the inventor-controlled plaintiff failed to “marshal the evidence necessary to defeat the defendants’ summary judgment motions”, suggesting that the failure is “perhaps a consequence of Cellspin’s decision to litigate this case with numerous defendants and accused products”. This grant is not CellSpin’s first summary judgment pickle, nor is this speculation the court’s first comment on the plaintiff’s litigation strategy—Judge Gonzalez Rogers having earlier criticized CellSpin for not having “filed a ‘test case’ before asserting its patents here” because those patents (according to the court) were “manifestly directed to an abstract idea”.

The Federal Circuit has vacated and remanded a Northern District of California invalidation of multiple mobile data sync patents under Alice, reviving the litigation campaign of inventor-controlled CellSpin Soft, Inc. The accompanying opinion applies key 2018 case law that has trimmed Alice’s reach, faulting District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers for “ignoring the principle, implicit in Berkheimer and explicit in Aatrix, that factual disputes about whether an aspect of the claims is inventive may preclude dismissal at the pleadings stage under § 101”. The appellate ruling also pulled the rug out from under the district court’s award of six-figure attorney fees to defendants Canon, Fossil, and Nike, with the Federal Circuit highlighting clear error in Judge Gonzalez Rogers’s exceptional case analysis—in part, holding for the first time that the presumption of validity extends to Section 101 eligibility, contrary to the lower court’s ruling.

A California court has invalidated the four patents asserted by inventor-controlled NPE CellSpin Soft, Inc. under Alice. Ruling on validity challenges brought by a variety of connected device and wearable manufacturers, including Canon, Fitbit, GoPro, and Panasonic, District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers held on April 3 that the patents at issue are invalid as directed to the abstract idea of “acquiring, transferring, and publishing data and multimedia content on one or more websites” while lacking a sufficient inventive concept.