Skip to Content

Safeguard Your Intellectual Property ®

SSJR Litigators Force Withdrawal of Prosecution Bar Claims

September 5, 2014 by in General


SSJR litigators successfully defeated claims of an alleged patent prosecution bar violation on behalf of its client, Karl Storz Endoscopy-America, Inc. (“KSEA”). SSJR represents KSEA in a patent infringement case against Stryker Corp. and Stryker Communications, Inc. (“Stryker”) currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Stryker’s defense rested in part on allegations that at least three of the five asserted patents could not be enforced because KSEA violated a patent prosecution bar found in a model interim protective order allegedly in place in a previous patent litigation between the parties. Based on archived versions of the Northern District of California’s model protective orders and a court memorandum, SSJR successfully showed that the model interim protective order did not contain any prosecution bar at the time the prior case was initiated in 2009 or when discovery began that same year. After KSEA filed a motion to strike and dismiss on this basis, Stryker withdrew all of its claims and defenses related to the alleged prosecution bar violation.