By Ernest Grumbles, III and Rachel C. Hughey and Susan Perera I. Introduction
In May 2006, the Supreme Court dramatically changed the landscape of permanent
injunctions
in patent cases in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange L.L.C.1
For decades prior to the eBay decision, the Federal Circuit had instructed that after
a determination
of patent infringement there was a general rule a patentee was entitled to a permanent injunction. The
Supreme
Court rejected such a rule. After the Supreme Court's eBay decision, patent holders can
no longer rely
on a presumptive entitlement to permanent injunctive relief after proving infringement. Instead, the
patentee
must now meet the traditional four-factor test to obtain a permanent injunction.
Three years have passed since the Supreme Court's decision, and it is an
appropriate time to
review district court decisions to understand how the district courts have been handling permanent
injunctions.
It is also valuable to review relevant Federal Circuit decisions to understand how the court reviews those
decisions—especially
when the district court decides not to grant a permanent injunction. Unsurprisingly, since the
eBay
decision, district courts have been willing to deny permanent injunctions after a finding of patent
infringement—something
that was virtually unheard of prior to eBay. And the Federal Ci...
