Trimble Logs a Win at Federal Circuit on Patent Jurisdiction

Trimble Inc. convinced the Federal Circuit to revive a suit seeking a ruling that its driver-logging devices don’t infringe patents on location tracking.

A federal trial court in California dismissed claims by Trimble and its wholly owned subsidiary, Innovative Software Engineering LLC, against patent owner PerDiemCo LLC. The trial court found that exercising personal jurisdiction over PerDiem in California would violate its due process rights, even though the patent owner sent repeated communications to the companies there.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed the jurisdiction ruling in a precedential opinion. It didn’t overturn its 1998 ...