The Curious Case of Patent-Infringement Pleading Standards

September 21, 2021 – The recent case of Bot M8 v. Sony provided the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit an opportunity to address an issue it rarely confronts: the pleading standard applicable to patent-infringement allegations.

This article will use Bot M8 as a vehicle to make one observation and one prediction. The observation is that the Federal Circuit’s interpretation of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8 — the rule setting forth the pleading standards applicable to civil actions in federal court — in patent cases is hard to reconcile with modern U.S. Supreme Court precedent on Rule 8. The prediction is that, if this issue makes it to the Supreme Court, the Court is likely to harmonize the application of Rule 8 in the patent-infringement context with the application of Rule 8 everywhere else.