Federal Circuit Issues Ruling That Could Limit ITC Section 337 Investigations

On December 13, 2013, a divided Federal Circuit panel reversed the U.S. International Trade Commission and held that the section 337 statute does not authorize the ITC to adjudicate any investigation under which the theory of infringement is based on induced infringement and the underlying direct infringement does not occur until after importation of the articles the exclusion order would bar. The Federal Circuit indicated that such inducement cases may be brought only to the district courts. Suprema, Inc. and Mentalix, Inc. v. International Trade Commission and Cross Match Technologies, Inc., No. 2012-1170.

Cross Match filed a complaint with the ITC charging infringement of a method claim of its patent. The patent contains claims drawn to methods used by an optical scanning system to detect fingerprint images and fingerprint quality. The ITC held that U.S. respondent Mentalix directly infringed method claim of the patent when it imported and then combined Korean