The following is not meant to be legal advice.
For patent attorneys, they may be getting several invitations to hear about the Federal Circuit decision, SanDisk Corp. (SanDisk) v. STMicroelectronics, Inc. (ST) The court in this case announced a declaratory judgment standard in patent cases. The new standard expands the rights of potential licensees to file preemptive complaints against patent owners.
SanDisk then filed a declaratory judgment suit, asking the court to hold that fourteen ST patents were invalid and not infringed. On appeal, the Federal Circuit held that the reasonable apprehension of suit test for declaratory judgment had been overruled by a footnote in the U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2007 MedImmune decision.
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