ABC IP v. AS Designs (Rare Breed Triggers MDL) — Court Denies TRO Against Unreleased Product Because Patent Owners Could Not Show Likely Infringement

Background

This is a patent infringement case within a multidistrict litigation proceeding. ABC IP, LLC and Rare Breed Triggers, Inc. accuse AS Designs, LLC and individual defendants of infringing five asserted patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 12,038,247, 12,031,784, 12,529,538, 12,578,159 and 12,636,403). Until the plaintiffs sought emergency relief, the only accused products they had named were the defendants’ Super Safety and ARC-Fire products. On September 2, 2026, the plaintiffs moved for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to block the launch of a different product, the ARHK, which the plaintiffs say is “built on” the ARC-Fire and “repackages that same technology” for the HK platform. The ARHK was announced at the SHOT Show trade show in January 2026 but had not launched when briefing closed. The defendants responded with a motion to strike the TRO motion on the ground that it targets a product that is not pleaded in the case. The court heard argument on October 15, 2026.

The Court’s Holding

Judge Amos L. Mazzant denied both motions.

Motion to strike denied. The defendants argued that because neither the complaint nor the plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction request mentioned the ARHK, it is not properly part of the case, and the court cannot grant interim relief of a kind it could not grant finally. The court disagreed. The complaint seeks to enjoin the defendants from infringing the asserted patents, not only through the named products, and the court concluded the plaintiffs should not be prevented from adding the ARHK as an accused product at this stage. Under the court’s Local Patent Rules, infringement contentions must identify where each claim element appears in each accused product, and amending contentions to add a new product after they are served requires good cause. But the deadline for contentions had not passed. The court agreed with the plaintiffs that if good cause could support adding a newly released product after contentions are served, there is no basis to exclude it before they are served, and it cited decisions allowing patentees to add products to their contentions.

TRO denied without prejudice. A party seeking a TRO must show (1) a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, (2) a substantial threat of irreparable harm, (3) that the threatened injury outweighs any harm to the defendant, and (4) that an injunction will not disserve the public interest. In a patent case, likelihood of success is governed by Federal Circuit law and the remaining factors by regional circuit (here, Fifth Circuit) law. To show likely success, a patentee must show that it will likely prove infringement, and a court should not issue an injunction where the defendant raises a substantial question of infringement or validity that the patentee cannot show lacks substantial merit. The plaintiffs relied on their technical expert’s claim charts of the ARC-Fire and on the defendants’ own description of the ARHK as “built on” ARC-Fire technology. But the plaintiffs acknowledged that their showing rested only on what the defendants had told the market, because the ARHK was unreleased and they had not been able to inspect a physical product or engineering drawings. Because the plaintiffs could not point to a physical product or product specifications that are covered by the asserted patents, the court found it difficult to conclude that the claims cover the ARHK and held the plaintiffs had not shown they would likely prove infringement. Having found no substantial likelihood of success, the court did not address the other three factors.

Key Takeaways

• In this court, a patent owner can accuse a newly announced product in a TRO motion before infringement contentions are due, even if the product was not named in the complaint.
• Marketing statements that a new product is “built on” an already-accused product were not enough to show likely infringement of a product that nobody had been able to inspect.
• Because likelihood of success on infringement is a threshold requirement for emergency relief, a plaintiff that cannot compare the claims to an actual product or its specifications may lose on that factor alone.
• The denial is without prejudice, so the plaintiffs may seek relief again if they obtain better evidence about the product.

Why It Matters

Patent owners who want to stop a product from launching must be ready to show how the claims read on that specific product, which can be hard before it ships. Companies that announce products ahead of release should note that the court allowed the new product to be brought into the case, but also that the burden of showing likely infringement remained with the patent owners.

The ruling is an interim order on a motion for emergency relief. It does not decide whether any product infringes or whether any asserted patent is valid.