On Aug. 10, a unanimous panel in in CBT Flint Partners LLC v. Return Path Inc. reversed a July 2008 summary judgment ruling by Judge Thomas Thrash Jr. of the Northern District of Georgia. Thrash had ruled that a claim in a patent owned by CBT Flint Partners was invalid for indefiniteness, believing that he was not authorized to correct the error. By that time, the claim was the only one left in CBT’s infringement suit.
In August 2007, Software developer CBT sued e-mail technology company Return Path and the Cisco IronPort Systems LLC, which is part of Cisco Systems Inc., alleging infringement of 10 claims in one patent and one claim in a second patent that involved methods for charging a fee for sending spam e-mail.
