Background
BlephEx, LLC holds a patent on a method and device for treating blepharitis, an inflammatory eyelid condition, by mechanically cleaning the eyelid margin. Myco Industries developed a competing device and began selling it. BlephEx accused Myco’s product of infringing its patent and made statements to eye care practitioners and potential customers suggesting that Myco’s device infringed BlephEx’s patent rights.
Myco filed suit in the Eastern District of Michigan, claiming that BlephEx’s infringement allegations were false and misleading and that they tortiously interfered with Myco’s business relationships. Myco sought a preliminary injunction to prevent BlephEx from continuing to make these infringement accusations. The district court granted the preliminary injunction, ordering BlephEx not to allege patent infringement against Myco or to threaten Myco’s customers with patent infringement claims.
BlephEx appealed, arguing that the injunction violated well-established law protecting a patent holder’s right to assert its patent rights in good faith.
The Court’s Holding
The Federal Circuit reversed the preliminary injunction. Writing for a unanimous panel, Judge O’Malley reaffirmed the longstanding principle that patent holders have a constitutionally grounded right to communicate their patent rights to potential infringers and the marketplace — a right rooted in the Noerr-Pennington doctrine and the First Amendment. A court cannot enjoin a patent holder from asserting its patent rights absent a specific finding of bad faith.
Bad faith requires two elements: (1) the asserted patent claims must be objectively baseless — meaning no reasonable litigant could realistically expect success on the merits — and (2) the patent holder must have acted with subjective bad intent, knowing the claims were baseless. The district court had enjoined BlephEx without making either finding. That was legal error requiring reversal.
The court emphasized that allowing injunctions against good-faith patent enforcement would deter legitimate assertion of patent rights and chill the communication of intellectual property claims in the marketplace. The high bar for injunctive relief against patent allegations exists precisely to prevent courts from becoming arbiters of whether to permit a patent owner to exercise its statutory rights.
Key Takeaways
- A court cannot preliminarily enjoin a patent holder from communicating or asserting its patent rights without a predicate finding of bad faith.
- Bad faith in patent assertions requires both objective baselessness (no reasonable litigant would expect to win) and subjective bad intent (the patent holder knew the claims were meritless).
- The Noerr-Pennington doctrine and First Amendment principles protect a patent owner’s right to notify the marketplace and potential infringers of its patent rights.
- Competitors who receive cease-and-desist letters or infringement notices cannot use preliminary injunctions to silence patent holders without satisfying the bad faith standard.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the fundamental right of patent holders to assert and communicate their patents without fear of being immediately silenced by a court order. In competitive markets where companies aggressively use patents as business tools, the threat of a preliminary injunction against patent enforcement could functionally strip a patent of its value before any court has evaluated its merits. The Federal Circuit’s insistence on the bad faith threshold protects legitimate patent owners while still leaving open remedies against truly abusive or sham patent assertions.
For businesses that receive patent infringement notices from competitors, Myco Industries is a reminder that seeking an injunction against those accusations is an uphill battle. The proper forum is typically a declaratory judgment action challenging the patent’s validity or alleging non-infringement — not an order that the patent holder simply stop talking about its rights.