Favorite Wisconsin/Seventh Circuit Cases: A “Non-Patent, Patent” Case
This is an unusual blog post for me in that for once I am playing it straight with Michael’s request of the month. Just one case will be discussed! This, however, is not through any intentional strategy on my part. To use a colloquial phrase “the pickings were slim” since the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit hears most patent-related matters. To say the choice was “slim,” however, does not mean there was no fertile ground, and so I am selecting County Materials Corp. v. Allan Block Corp., 502 F.3d 730 (7th Cir. 2007), as my “favorite case.”
In County Materials, the Seventh Circuit, among other items, analyzed whether County Materials (a Wisconsin corporation) could sustain a claim of “patent misuse” against Allan Block (a Minnesota corporation). The case is an interesting one because County Materials is a great example of what, in her opinion, Judge Diane Woods (awesomely) refers to as a “non-patent, patent case” that falls within the jurisdiction of the regional courts of appeals, rather than the Federal Circuit, because the dispute before the court was not one where federal patent law creates the cause of action or is necessary to resolve the circumstances of the case.