District Court Awards Fees After PTAB Cancels Claims, PTAB Litigation Blog
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Patent litigation can be quite costly to defend against, that’s no secret. But when can a prevailing defendant recover its attorneys’ fees from the plaintiff, patent holder, and under what circumstances? Under the “American Rule,” each party in a lawsuit generally pays its own lawyers. Fee shifting, however, does happen from time to time in exceptional cases. Recently in California, a district court issued an order in a patent infringement case involving water-park rides, Flow Rider Surf, Ltd. v. Pac. Surf Designs, Inc., No. 315CV01879BENBLM, 2020 WL 907058 (S.D. Cal. Feb. 25, 2020), in which the court awarded attorneys’ fees to the defendant after the PTAB’s finding of all the asserted claims to be unpatentable.
