By Jason Rantanen Mag Aerospace Industries, Inc. v. B/E Aerospace, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2016) Download OpinionPanel: Prost (author), Mayer, Reyna This case involves an advanced patent–but ancient property–law concept: assignor estoppel. The basic idea is that when an inventor or patent owner assigns a patent to another party, the original owner cannot challenge the validity of that patent. In Diamond Scientific Co. v. Ambico, Inc., 848 F.2d 1220, 1224 (Fed. Cir. 1988), the Federal Circuit explained the rationale for the doctrine: “Courts that have expressed the estoppel doctrine in terms of unfairness and injustice have reasoned that an assignor should not be permitted to sell something and later to assert that what was sold is worthless, all to the detriment of the assignee.” Here, the accused infringer (B/E) was not itself a former owner of the patents-in-suit, but had hired the original inventor after that inventor had assigned the…
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