In St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants, Inc. v. Hewlett-Packard Co., C.A. No. 10-425-LPS (D. Del. Mar. 28, 2012), Judge Stark clarified the pleading standard for an allegation of willful infringement. The defendant moved to strike the plaintiff’s willfulness allegations as insufficiently pled, prompting the plaintiff to move to amend its complaint. Id. at 1. The defendant argued that amendment would be futile because the plaintiff’s proposed amended willfulness allegations still failed to allege both the defendant’s “knowledge of the asserted patents and knowledge of the infringement.” Id. at 4. The Court rejected that argument, and clarified that a willfulness allegation is sufficiently pled if it “plead[s] facts giving rise to ‘at least a showing of objective recklessness’ of the infringement risk.” Id. (citing In re Seagate Technology, LLC, 497 F.3d 1360, 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2007)). Finding that the proposed amended complaint sufficiently pled willfulness under Seagate, the Court granted the plaintiff’s motion to amend and denied the defendant’s motion to strike as moot. Id. at 6.
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