Patent Infringement Lawsuits Against Software End-Users

Are you a Canadian software vendor with customers in the USA? Let's say your US end-user customer is sued for patent infringement in the US based on use of your software, but the lawsuit avoids naming your company. In other words, your customers are sued, but you are not.

Ok, so you avoided a lawsuit. However, for business reasons you may want to be "in the ring" to assist your end-user customers to defend the infringement claims. One of the defences to infringement is to challenge the validity of the patent in question. But if your company is not named, how do you raise that defence? In order to seek a "declaratory judgment" that the patent is invalid, you need something called "standing" - a right to make your case in court. If you are defending an infringement allegation (if you are named in the lawsuit), you have that standing as a defendant. But if not, you have to ask the court for standing... sound complicated?