Last February, plaintiff Memorylink was on the losing side of a motion to dismiss almost all counts of a complaint against Motorola, a company with which it had a joint development agreement. During their relationship, Motorola filed a patent application that had both Motorola and Memorylink inventors listed, then filed a second application with just Motorola inventors listed.
Count I of the complaint was for correction of inventorship on the first patent. The court originally held that Memorylink had “pleaded itself out of court” because the documents showed that Motorola contributed to the project, but, as explained in my previous post, the court didn’t analyze whether the patent itself was the product of joint inventorship. So Memorylink filed a motion for reconsideration.
The court reversed the dismissal of the claim on patent inventorship, as well as some other claims. Memorylink successfully convinced the court that none of the documents the court originally relied on to decide inventorship actually showed that Motorola was an inventor on the patent itself. The court reversed and Memorylink’s count for correction of inventorship is alive.
Memorylink Corp. v. Motorola, Inc., No. 08 C 3301, 2009 WL 3366974 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 15, 2009).
© 2009 Pamela Chestek
