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Sometimes the long road of Intellectual Property infringement ends up in Bankruptcy Court. Then the normal rules can change. Tech Pharmacy Services, who owned patents for pharmaceutical dispensing machines sued Provider Meds LLC and its affiliated companies for patent infringement. The parties ended up settling. As part of the settlement, Tech Pharmacy licensed the patents to Provider Meds. The Provider Meds' companies filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization cases. The cases were later converted to Chapter 7 liquidation cases and a Chapter 7 trustee was appointed. But, Provider Meds somehow managed to not list the patent license on their bankruptcy schedules. The Chapter 7 trustee had 60 days from the date of conversion of the cases to assume the licenses. Since the trustee didn’t know about the licenses, the trustee didn’t assume them. Since they weren’t assumed, they were deemed rejected by operation of law. Rejection means that Tech Pharmacy would no longer have to honor the license agreements. The Chapter 7 trustee sold Provider Meds’ assets to RPD Holdings. Imagine RPD’s surprise when it realized the sale didn’t include assignment of the Tech Pharmacy patent licenses. RPD appealed. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court rulings that the rejected licenses couldn’t be resurrected.
WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS. Here lies a cautionary tale. Whenever a transaction involves a party who is a debtor in bankruptcy, land mines abound. This case went wrong in a number of ways. First of all, the bankruptcy petitions omitted material information about their patent licenses. Second, the Chapter 7 trustee was kept in the dark and ended up involuntarily rejecting valuable patent licenses. Third, RPD erroneously assumed it was getting the licenses along with the other assets thereby violating the 11th Commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Assume.”