Ninth Circuit Dismisses Malicious Prosecution Suit Against Gillet and Matthews over Pliers Patent Dispute

Holding:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court’s dismissal of a complaint for malicious prosecution filed by Fisher Tool Company, Inc. against defendant-appellee Gillet Outillage and its counsel Matthews Collins Shepherd & McKay, P.A. Defendants-appellees earlier sued for infringement over a patent relating to pliers’ design, but later decided to drop the suit when the district court construed the patent narrowly at a pre-trial Markman hearing. In response, plaintiffs-appellants instituted this case for malicious prosecution. The Ninth Circuit found in favor of Gillet, since plaintiffs-appellants failed to show evidence of Gillet’s bad faith and that it had failed to disclose all pertinent and material facts to its counsel relating to the infringement analysis. With regard to the charge of malicious prosecution against Gillet’s law firm, Matthews, the Ninth Circuit also sustained the findings of the district court that Mathews had probable cause to arrive at a conclusion that plaintiff’s product infringed the Gillet patent. Plaintiffs-appellants again failed to demonstrate that the three infringement analyses obtained by the firm’s patent lawyers fell below professional standards or were done in bad faith. Although the district court ultimately construed Gillet’s patent more narrowly than the lawyers predicted, it did not mean that the lawyers’ analyses were completely lacking in apparent merit. Hence, dismissal of plaintiffs-appellants’ complaint was warranted.

Detailed Summary:

Defendant-appellee Gillet Outillage is a French company that makes hose clamp pliers. It owns French and U.S. patents on the pliers’ design. When Gillet discovered that plaintiffs-appellants were selling similar pliers in the United States, the company sued them for patent infringement.  Unfortunately for Gillet, the district court construed the patent’s claims narrowly at a pre-trial Markman hearing, prompting Gillet to drop the suit, which was then dismissed.

Plaintiffs-appellants then sued Gillet and its lawyers, claiming that Gillet’s lawsuit was a malicious prosecution under California law and a violation of the federal antitrust laws. Plaintiffs-appellants also asserted that the company’s public…

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