Court declined to dismiss, bifurcate or stay antitrust counts and permitted 4 patent claims to be added
Synopsys, Inc. v. Magma Design Automation, No. 05-701-GMS, May 25, 2006.
Sleet, J. The Court denied plaintiff’s motion to dismiss 6 counts of defendant’s amended answer relating to the Sherman Act, Lanham Act and state law claims. It further denied plaintiff’s motion to bifurcate or stay the antitrust claims from the patent claims. Defendant’s motion to amend to add four counterclaims of patent infringement was granted.
The patents relate to logic synthesis improvements in computer software used to design extremely complex integrated circuits. The court found that the allegations that plaintiff is acting anti-competitively by using the patent system and exclusive dealing contracts to run a competitor out of business sufficiently plead a violation of the Sherman Act. The heightened pleading requirements of Rule 9(b) are not applicable to the Lanham Act claims in the context of this case. Defendant has sufficiently plead Lanham Act violations under notice pleading. The decision to bifurcate or not is to be decided on a case by case basis. Regardless of the fact that other courts may bifurcate and stay the antitrust claims, the court concluded that neither jury confusion nor efficiency weigh in favor of bifurcation. The timely motion to add 4 new patent claims was granted although there was less than 6 months of fact discovery left. The scheduling order can be adjusted to allow more time for discovery while preserving the trial date.
