Today the Federal Circuit released three nonprecedential opinions and one nonprecedential order. One of the opinions comes in a case appealed from the Court of Federal Claims, which dismissed various claims for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and granted judgment on the record with respect to other claims. The second and third opinions come in related patent infringement cases. The nonprecedential order is a dismissal. Here are the introductions to the opinions and a link to the dismissal.
Buholtz v. United States (Nonprecedential)
Plaintiff-Appellant Kenneth L. Buholtz appeals two decisions of the United States Court of Federal Claims that (1) dismissed sua sponte Counts I, II, and IV of his Fifth Amended Complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, Buholtz v. United States, No. 16-408, 2023 WL 2054073, at *10 (Fed. Cl. Feb. 16, 2023), and (2) dismissed or granted judgment on the record in favor of Defendant-Appellee United States (“the Government”) with respect to the remaining Counts III and V–XI of Mr. Buholtz’s Fifth Amended Complaint, Buholtz v. United States, 167 Fed. Cl. 107, 110 (2023). Mr. Buholtz challenges both decisions. For the reasons set forth below, we affirm.
Cellspin Soft, Inc. v. Fitbit LLC (Nonprecedential)
Cellspin Soft, Inc., alleging infringement of several of its patents, brought separate actions against Fitbit LLC and other companies, including Nikon Americas, Inc. and Nikon, Inc. (collectively, Nikon), in the District Court for the Northern District of California. In June 2022, after years of litigation before Judge Gonzalez Rogers, the district court granted summary judgment of noninfringement to Fitbit, Nikon, and others in their separate actions (which were not consolidated but were litigated in conjunction with each other). Today, we affirm the summary judgment rulings in the several cases, which include cases against Fitbit and Nikon and (as will be relevant here) against Fossil Group, Inc. and Misfit, Inc. (collectively, Fossil) and Garmin International, Inc. and Garmin USA, Inc. (collectively, Garmin), among others. Cellspin Soft, Inc. v. Fitbit LLC, Fed. Cir. Nos. 2022-2025, 2022-2028 to -2030, 2022-2032, 2022-2037 (Summary Judgment Appeal Decision).
Seven months after the district court entered summary judgment in June 2022, Cellspin filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 455 arguing that Judge Gonzalez Rogers should recuse herself from the case and that the summary judgment should be vacated because the grounds for disqualification existed at the time it was entered. The several arguments for recusal rested on the fact that, in February 2021, Fitbit had become a subsidiary of Google LLC (itself an indirect subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., a publicly traded company). Judge Gonzalez Rogers denied the motion. Cellspin Soft, Inc. v. Fitbit, Inc., 2023 WL 2176758 (Feb. 15, 2023) (Recusal Opinion). Cellspin timely appealed.
We first dismiss the appeal in the case against Nikon because Cellspin failed to file a notice of appeal in the Nikon case. That dismissal leaves only the appeal in the case against Fitbit. We conclude that the bulk of the recusal motion was properly denied by the district court as untimely. We also conclude that, even if there was error as to the remaining part (an issue we do not decide), any such error was harmless. We reach that conclusion because the outcome of Cellspin’s infringement case against Fitbit could not be altered by Judge Gonzalez Rogers’s recusal from that case, given that we have affirmed the summary judgment of noninfringement in the Fossil and Garmin cases—as to which Cellspin has not preserved a recusal challenge—on a ground directly applicable to the case against Fitbit. We therefore dismiss the appeal as to Nikon and affirm as to Fitbit.
Cellspin Soft, Inc. v. Fitbit LLC (Nonprecedential)
In 2017, Cellspin Soft, Inc. brought patent infringement actions in the Northern District of California against the following companies: Fitbit LLC; Nike, Inc.; Under Armour, Inc.; Fossil Group, Inc. and Misfit, Inc. (collectively, Fossil); Nikon Americas, Inc. and Nikon, Inc. (collectively, Nikon); and Garmin International, Inc. and Garmin USA, Inc. (collectively, Garmin). The actions were not consolidated but were litigated in conjunction with each other, along with several other actions not at issue here. As now relevant, Cellspin alleged infringement of various claims of three of its patents. The district court granted summary judgment of noninfringement for all defendants. Cellspin appeals. We affirm.