By Scott Cameron

Intellectual property law is governed by an assortment of federal laws and also several state laws. Trademarks, trade dress, copyrights, patents, and antitrust are all protected by federal statutes and a complaint alleging a violation of these rights can usually be filed in or removed to federal court. Therefore, intellectual law practitioners are generally accustomed to litigating in federal court. Among other aspects of federal practice, IP litigators are usually familiar with the well known “notice pleading” requirement for a federal complaint. 

Under the notice pleading standard, a complaint will not be dismissed for failure to state a claim so long as it puts the defendant on notice of the gravamen of the plaintiff’s complaint and includes the “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief” called for in Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Detailed factual allegations are not required to survive a challenge to the complaint. The U.S. Supreme Court set out the pleading requirement decades ago in a case that has been almost universally cited ever since. In Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41 (1957), the Court laid down what it termed “the accepted rule that a complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief.” Federal courts have applied that standard for 50 years to refuse to dismiss complaints containing only the barest of allegations.    Continue Reading Plausibility – Is It The New Pleading Standard In Federal Courts?