Canon, Inc. v. Avigilon USA Corporation, Inc. et al. (19-cv-10931).

Canon sued Avigilon earlier this year, accusing Avigilon of willfully infringing and inducing infringement of a Cannon patent covering transmission of video data. Judge Gorton has now granted Avigilon 2019s motion to dismiss the induced infringement and willful infringement allegations, finding that Canon 2019s complaint failed to plead facts sufficient to support an inference of actual pre-suit knowledge of the asserted patent by Avigilon, instead only making conclusory statements to that effect. Judge Gorton noted that there is a conflict between district courts as to whether an alleged inducer must be shown to have had knowledge of the patent prior to the filing of the lawsuit, with a minority of courts holding that post-suit knowledge (as through the complaint itself) of the asserted patent improperly bootstraps the knowledge to pre-suit acts, and more to the point, that the District of Massachusetts has limited the acceptability of knowledge through the filing of a complaint to later-amended complaints that expressly limit the inducement claims to post-filing conduct. He further found the same issues applied to the willfulness allegations, which also require proof of knowledge of the asserted patent. He therefore dismissed the inducement and willfulness claims without prejudice to allow Canon to appropriately amend the complaint, should circumstances permit.