Patent Jurisdiction Ruling Said to Clash With Precedent

A recent Federal Circuit ruling on personal jurisdiction in patent cases conflicts with the court’s precedent and will complicate patent licensing negotiations, attorneys say.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit revived a suit by Trimble Inc. seeking a ruling that its driver-logging devices don’t infringe PerDiemCo LLC’s patents on location tracking. PerDiem’s repeated communications with Trimble in California opened it up to a declaratory judgment suit there, the court held in a precedential opinion.

The court said its ruling was consistent with its 1998 holding in Red Wing Shoe Co. v. Hockerson-Halberstadt, Inc. that cease-and-desist letters and ...