Wow! This is something you don't see every day. The defendant in Truinject Corp. v Galderma S.A., C.A. No. 19-592-GBW (D. Del.) filed—and won—five motions for summary judgment.
Impressively, each of the five motions had its own grounds. This isn't an instance where one winning argument resolved five motions.
Here are the five motions:
- Breach of Contract: No damages. The Court granted summary judgment that because the alleged harm was not actually caused by the breach, there can be no damages.
- Trade Secret Misappropriation: No misappropriation. Plaintiff showed that misappropriation could have happened—because employees had access and worked on defendant's product—but offered no evidence that it did happen.
- Non-Infringement of Patent 1: The product doesn't practice the claims. Defendant showed both that the device did not infringement and not capable of infringement (there was a dispute about whether the claims required performance or mere capability of performance).
- Trade Dress: No trade dress infringement. Plaintiff offered some evidence of confusion, but insufficient evidence that its trade dress had any secondary meaning.
- Non-Infringement of Patent 2: Insufficient evidence of direct infringement. Plaintiff alleged testing in the United States and even provided a picture of an alleged infringing use from a social media post; but the testing required the jury to speculate, and the plaintiff could not show that the pictured infringement occurred in the United States and after the patent issued.
All told, it was a clean sweep on SJ motions by the defendant—nicely done!
The Court has since vacated the 8-day trial that was set to start on October 10, although it looks like there may still be a dispute about whether plaintiff could be entitled to equitable relief on its breach of contract claim—although it's not clear what that relief would be, if the alleged breach caused no harm. See D.I. 818, 2-3 (status report).
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