December 1, 2020 will mark the five-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s abrogation of Form 18—the model complaint that provided the minimum requirements for stating a claim of direct infringement.  Following the abrogation of Form 18, patent infringement claims must satisfy the plausibility standard articulated in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007) and Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009).  Courts, however, have diverged in applying Iqbal and Twombly to patent cases.  As a result, pleading standards now vary from jurisdiction-to-jurisdiction (and even from judge-to-judge within the same jurisdiction).

In a series of blog posts, we will explore how courts are currently applying the Iqbal/Twombly pleading standards to patent cases.  In this first installment, we look at Federal Circuit opinions issued since the abrogation of Form 18.  These decisions arguably raise as many questions as they answer.
Continue Reading Patent Infringement Pleading Standards Remain Unsettled Five Years After the Abrogation of Form 18 – Part 1: Inconsistent Federal Circuit Guidance