The Chain of Command for Complaints

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The Chain of Command for Complaints


The Supreme Court’s twin decisions in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal have stirred up the pot of pleading standards in the years since their issuance. An irritation to every plaintiff’s lawyer, a touchstone to every defendant’s lawyer, Twombly and Iqbal heightened the level of detail required to state a valid claim.

Just how much this case law has changed the pleading standards is open to debate—and likely varies by district. Ask any defense lawyer, however, and she or he will tell you that a major sticking point to a real change in patent pleading standards is the bare–bones minimum sample complaint set forth in Fed. R. Civ. P. Form 18, which was implicitly blessed by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in the post–Twombly decision of McZeal v. Sprint Nextel Corp. Despite the fact that Form 18 requires little to no detail to set forth a patent claim, relying on McZeal, some courts have found that compliance with Form 18 was sufficient to stake out a claim and skate by the reformed pleading standards.

In a short opinion out of the District of Delaware, however, Judge Baylson ruled that, with all due respect to McZeal, the pecking order required that deference be paid to Iqbal, which undermines McZeal. While not the first judge to conclude thusly (and rightly, in this author’s opinion), Judge Baylson’s opinion is nonetheless noteworthy, and perhaps constitutes another note in the drumbeat to update Form 18.

Posted by Stacy Stitham

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