Dismissal of DJ Action for Lack of Personal Jurisdiction Affirmed

Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued an opinion in Maxchief Investments Ltd. v. Wok & Pan, Ind., Inc., 2018-1121 (November 29, 2018). At the district court, Maxchief asserted claims seeking declaratory judgments of noninfringement and invalidity of various Wok patents and a claim for tortious interference. The district court dismissed the declaratory judgment claims for lack of personal jurisdiction and dismissed the tortious interference claim for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The Federal Circuit affirmed. Regarding the declaratory judgment claims, the Court held a declaratory judgment claim arises out of a patentee’s contacts with a forum state only if those contacts “relate in some material way to the enforcement or the defense of the patent” in the forum. The Court rejected Maxchief’s assertion that a California lawsuit filed by Wok against a retailer of Maxchief’s products supported specific jurisdiction in Tennessee. The Court explained that the lawsuit, filed in California against a California resident, was directed at California, not Tennessee. The mere fact that Wok’s requested injunction in the California suit might impact a Tennessee distributor of Maxchief’s products was “too attenuated a connection to satisfy minimum contacts.” The Court further rejected Maxchief’s assertion that a notice letter Wok sent to Maxchief’s lawyer in Tennessee created sufficient contacts to support jurisdiction there. The letter alleged one of Maxchief’s customers, a company located in Kansas, infringed Wok’s patents. The Court explained in evaluating such a letter the proper focus is on the location of the party alleged to infringe, not on the location of the lawyer to whom the letter is sent. As such, the letter constituted a contact with Kansas, not Tennessee. Regarding the tortious interference claim, the Court also found personal jurisdiction lacking, and therefore did not reach the question of subject matter jurisdiction. The Court explained “merely sending a notice letter to a lawyer in the forum state does not constitute activity directed at the forum state where the entity alleged to infringe does not operate in the state.”