JUNE 2009
A litigant's guide to collateral estoppel
The doctrine of collateral estoppel can assist parties facing costly litigation. Robert Berezin and Carmen Bremer consider how it can be invoked in patent disputes
| One-minute read |
| Collateral estoppel can be used to prevent a party from re-litigating an issue that has already been fully and fairly litigated by that party, and that was actually decided against it in prior litigation before a different court. The doctrine can reduce the costs of patent litigation and dictate its outcome. It is, however, an equitable doctrine that will not be applied unless certain preconditions are met. When considering whether to apply collateral estoppel, courts often weigh issues such as whether the defendant had an adequate incentive to defend the issue in an earlier suit, whether the judgment relied on is itself inconsistent with one or more prior judgments in favour of the defendant, or whether procedural opportunities available in the present litigation were unavailable in the first action. Clarifying these requirements will benefit both the courts and the parties in a patent dispute. |
Parties engaged in patent litigation may find it useful to look to the past for answers to the most pressing issues confronting them today – that is, from prior litigation involving the same patents, but not necessarily all of the same parties or accused products. The doctrine of collateral estoppel (also called issue preclusion) is frequently implicated in patent cases, as evidenced by the Supreme Court's landmark rulings pertaining to it and the Federal Circuit's recent decision to certify a collateral estoppel issue for interlocutory appeal in Shire LLC v Sandoz, Inc (Fed Cir 2009).
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