A patent owner’s appellate arguments veered so far from earlier positions in its five-year-old case that the Federal Circuit found them “waived,” “judicially estopped,” and “also meritless.”
Cooperative Entertainment Inc.'s second appeal in the case, which came after it hired new counsel, ignored a foundational rule of appellate law barring consideration of arguments “not decided below,” Judge Leonard P. Stark said in the Tuesday opinion.
“These principles of appellate litigation are so well settled, and usually so well understood, that we rarely see them violated as flagrantly as Cooperative has done so here,” Stark said.
Cooperative sued Kollective Technology ...