Readers of the blog will recall that, back in January, we noted that the Court ordered a stay to continue through an appeal to the Federal Circuit. As it turned out, we hadn't seen anything yet, because just this week Judge Fallon issued an order extending a stay through an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Notably, the case, Hologic, Inc. et al. v. Minerva Surgical, Inc., C.A. No. 20-295-SRF (D. Del. Apr. 22, 2021), was otherwise quite advanced—with a jury trial scheduled for August. But this is the extremely uncommon situation where the Supreme Court just heard argument in a related action, where it will address the limits of assignor estoppel.
Just how uncommon? Seeing this led me to question exactly how often this the Court has stayed pending Supreme Court review in patent cases. Going through contested stay motions for the last 10 years, I managed to turn up only 2 others—one of which was American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. v. Neapco Holdings LLC, C.A. No. 15-1168-LPS, D.I. 245 (D. Del. Feb., 27, 2021), which was decided just this last February, while the other—Butamax Advanced Biofuels LLC v. Gevo Inc., C.A. No. 11-54-SLR, D.I. 767 (D. Del. May 20, 2014)—almost 7 years old.
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