United States Federal Circuit

In this patent infringement action, a jury found in favor of plaintiff and awarded damages for defendants' infringement of the asserted claims of the patents at issue. The district court entered final judgment consistent with the jury's verdict and denied all of defendants' post-trial motions for judgment as a matter of law. Upon docketing those rulings, the time for defendants' to file an appeal began to run, but they failed to file a timely notice of appeal. Defendants thereafter filed a motion to extend or reopen the appeal period pursuant to Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure 4(a)(5) and 4(a)(6). The judgment of the district court denying defendants' motion is affirmed, where: 1) the district court did not abuse its discretion when it found that defendants did not satisfy their burden to show excusable neglect for their failure to read the underlying orders and to check the docket for more than a month after the court issued the final orders; 2) in this era of electronic filing, there is no abuse of discretion in the district court's decision to impose an obligation to monitor an electronic docket for entry of an order which a party and its counsel already have in their position and know that the clerk attempted to enter; and 3) the district court therefore did not abuse its discretion or clearly err in refusing to extend or reopen the appeal period.

Appellate Information

• Decided 03/19/2015
• Published 03/19/2015

Judges

• O'Malley

Court

• United States Federal Circuit

Counsel