Judge Andrews resolved a request for a permanent injunction in a patent case today, in a way I haven't seen before.
In Sunoco Partners Marketing & Terminals L.P. v. Powder Springs Logistics, LLC, C.A. No. 17-1390-RGA (D. Del.), the plaintiff won an infringement jury verdict in a trial last month.
The patents involve mixing gasoline with butane automatically, rather than through a process that involves manual intervention. The accused infringement involves the mixing of gasoline and butane on a pipeline.
Plaintiff immediately moved for a permanent injunction, and sought a hearing on the injunction on December 22 or 23, just before the holidays. The patent relevant to the permanent injunction expires in April of this year.
Judge Andrews shot down the idea of a pre-holiday hearing, and suggested that the defendants could easily avoid any further infringement:
The Court does not intend to hold a hearing on Dec. 22 or Dec. 23. . . . The Court wonders why there is much of a dispute on the permanent injunction. The Court expects the parties to address in their briefing why, in light of Defendants trial evidence, Defendants can't avoid any further infringement simply by throwing the automatic to manual switches on their Grabners and reassigning or hiring a few more people to do manual blending. Since the capture rate is the same for manual or automatic, it seems easy to avoid infringement, and with very little cost.
The parties proceeding with filing 30 pages of briefing. The defendants explained that they had already stopped the infringing automatic mixing, but nonetheless opposed the injunction for lack of irreparable harm, because the harm plaintiff identified was caused by blending generally, rather than the claimed automatic blending.
Plaintiff maintained its motion despite the fact that the defendant had already stopped the infringing conduct because it felt it could not "take Defendants at their word." Instead, in their reply brief, they requested a "verification requirement" in the permanent injunction.
The Court ultimately resolved the dispute without having to rule on any of the legal issues, by simply issuing the injunction as to the conduct the defendants had already agreed to, without the verification requirement requested in the reply brief:
Defendants do not object to the form of Plaintiff’s proposed permanent injunction. Plaintiff does not argue that what Defendants say they will do is insufficient to avoid infringement. Thus, I conclude that Defendants have stated that they will abide by what Plaintiff seems to concede is all that is required to avoid infringement.
I will separately enter a modification of the proposed permanent injunction, without making any of the findings required for a permanent injunction, recognizing that at this time it is essentially a “maintain the status quo” order. I see no prejudice to either side in doing so, and it puts the Court’s imprimatur on Plaintiff’s request that Defendants adhere to what Defendants have voluntarily agreed to do.
It also commented on how the parties should have been able to resolve this without the Court:
Given the usual backlog of cases and motions in this District, it is regrettable that the parties could not resolve this without me. This is particularly so because Defendants seem to have stopped the infringing conduct after the adverse verdict. (D.I. 782-2 (Hitz Decl.)).
All told this seems to be a win for everybody. The defendants can keep doing what they were going to do anyway, the plaintiff got a court order to ensure the defendants can't change their mind, and the Court resolved the motion without a lengthy opinion.
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