USA: Lyda v. CBS Corporation, United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit, No. 2015-1923, 30 September 2016

A district court did not err in dismissing an inventor’s claim that CBS Corporation, its CBS Interactive subsidiary, and "others under the control or direction of an independent contractor" hired by CBS to produce the television show "Big Brother" infringed two patents relating to methods and systems for obtaining real time responses from a broadcast audience, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has held. Because the inventor’s amended complaint failed to meet the Twombly/Iqbal pleading standard, and because the former Form 18 pleading standard did not apply to joint infringement claims, dismissal for failure to state a claim was appropriate (Lyda v. CBS Corporation, September 30, 2016, Stoll, K.).

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.