In Cloud Satchel LLC v. Amazon.com, Inc., C.A. No. 13-941-SLR & v. Barnes & Noble, Inc., C.A. No. 13-942-SLR (D. Del. Mar. 30. 2017), Senior Judge Sue L. Robinson had previously ruled on summary judgment that the patents-in-suit were invalid under Section 101. Plaintiff moved for relief from judgment, arguing that the Court’s “decisions had been called into question by three Federal Circuit cases that issued after the Federal Circuit’s affirmance in this case” (i.e., the Federal Circuit’s Enfish, BASCOM, and Rapid Litigation decisions). Id. at 2.
The Court denied the motions, observing that controlling Third Circuit precedent has consistently held that intervening changes in the law “rarely justify relief from final judgments.” Id. at 2 (citations omitted) (emphasis in original). The Court concluded that, while Section 101 jurisprudence “has been an evolving one,” the subsequent Federal Circuit cases “simply reflect the reality that different panels may describe, interpret and/or apply existing precedent differently in light of different facts. The Federal Circuit decisions identified by plaintiff are the kind of ‘intervening developments in the law’ that result from our system of common law, and plaintiff has filed to adduce evidence that the Federal Circuit’s pronouncement of invalidity was either an extreme or unexpected hardship.” Id. at 3.
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