Disingenuous Licensing Discussions Sufficient to Support Willful Infringement Claim

The court denied defendant's motion to dismiss plaintiff's willful infringement claims for failing to sufficiently allege egregious conduct through defendant's licensing negotiations. "When considering [plaintiff's] allegations and other facts pled in the Complaint that show that [defendant] knew in detail about how it infringed each Asserted Patent as a whole, a reasonable inference can be drawn that [defendant's] licensing discussions were disingenuous. . . . As such, the Court finds that the Complaint contains sufficient facts from which a plausible conclusion could be reached that [defendant's] conduct went beyond those 'in a typical infringement case' and thus was egregious. . . . [T]o the extent that [defendant] is arguing that the allegations pertaining to the settlement discussions cannot lend any support to [plaintiff's] willful infringement claim at the pleading stage, the Court rejects that argument. Whether [plaintiff] has evidence to prove its claims is a matter for another day."

Finjan, Inc. v. SonicWall, Inc., 5-17-cv-04467 (CAND May 16, 2018, Order) (Freeman, USDJ)