Phoenix Services LLC won’t have to face antitrust claims that a rival oilfield services provider, Chandler Manufacturing LLC, based on Phoenix’s alleged bad-faith assertion of a bogus patent, but the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said it would “continue to disagree with the Federal Circuit” over whether it has appellate jurisdiction over the companies’ particular type of dispute.
The clash falls under the Walker Process doctrine, which imposes antitrust liability on companies that use ill-gotten patents to obtain a monopoly.
Fifth Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, writing for a three-judge panel in an opinion issued Monday, ...