In a
November 8, 2013 ruling, Judge Richard J. Sullivan declined to dismiss plaintiff Joao Control & Monitoring Systems, LLC's third amended patent infringement complaint against Digital Playground, Inc. and others.
First, the Court denied the defendants' motion to dismiss the direct infringement claim. In doing so, Judge Sullivan wrote:
Direct infringement claims operate under a unique legal standard. The Federal Circuit has held that any direct infringement claim mirroring Form 18 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is sufficient to state a claim. This is so even if the pleadings would otherwise not satisfy the plausibility-pleading standard that applies to all other claims.
(citation omitted) The Court also applied the relaxed pleading standard to the allegations against all "Defendants" generally, noting that there is "no reason not to interpret every allegation that 'Defendants' did something as a stand in for an allegation that 'Defendant
A, Defendant
B, . . .and Defendant
Z' each did something."
