Lawyer Article

This article was published in the August 22nd edition of Southeast Tech Wire.

Mr. Cicero is a Member at Womble Carlyle. Matthew W. Howell assisted Mr. Cicero in developing this article. Mr. Howell has been a 2006 Summer Associate at Womble Carlyle. The views herein expressed are solely those of the authors and are not necessarily the views of Womble Carlyle or its clients.

Excerpt
The most important facet of a business is obviously doing business. Therefore, an injunction, a legal instrument capable of forcing the halt of business operations, is one of the biggest threats to any company. Almost three months ago the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision regarding permanent injunctions for patent infringement in eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. Prior to eBay, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has exclusive appellate jurisdiction over cases arising under patent law, endorsed the practice of granting near-automatic permanent injunctions for patentees who prevailed on the issue of infringement liability. eBay ended that practice, instead invoking an equitable balancing test traditionally used by courts in other cases. Although the Federal Circuit has yet to review a lower court decision applying eBay, two recent cases from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas provide an early glimpse of the impact of eBay upon prevailing patentees’ requests for permanent injunctions. Those decisions suggest that, indeed, eBay’s impact will be significant and far-reaching, perhaps influencing decisions on whether to settle existing litigation or even whether to bring a patent lawsuit in the first place.

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