Airframe Systems, Inc. v. Raytheon Company, et al

Filing 920100331

Opinion

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var WPFootnote1 = '                   The Hon. David H. Souter, Associate Justice (Ret.) of the\
Supreme Court of the United States, sitting by designation.\
'

var WPFootnote2 = '                   Airframe suggests that this visit occurred in 1997, while\
Raytheon documents indicate that the visit likely occurred in 1998. \
The parties agree, however, that this visit was the only time when\
Airframe source code could have been downloaded onto AIS computers\
and when the source code was used to modify software to make it\
compatible with AIS\'s newer computers. Whether this happened in\
1997 or 1998 is not material to our analysis.\
'

var WPFootnote3 = '                   Raytheon created AIS by combining the operations of two\
prior companies: E-Systems, Inc., which it acquired in 1995, and\
Chrysler Technologies Airborne Systems, which it acquired in 1996. \
See L-3 Communications Integrated Systems Group, About Us,\
http://www.l-3com.com/is/aboutUs.html (last visited Mar. 7, 2010).\
'

var WPFootnote4 = '                   Airframe sued both L-3 Communications Corporation, the\
defendant in the New York action, and L-3 Communications Holdings,\
Inc., the corporate owner of L-3 Communications Corporation. \
Airframe referred to the two companies collectively as "L-3" and\
has drawn no distinction between them. Corporate parents and\
subsidiaries are generally considered identical parties for claim\
preclusion purposes, see, e.g., In re Colonial Mortgage Bankers\
Corp., 324 F.3d 12, 17 (1st Cir. 2003), and we also refer to these\
parties collectively as "L-3."\
'

var WPFootnote5 = '                   Stolarz is not a party to the present appeal. The\
district court granted his motion to dismiss for lack of personal\
jurisdiction, and Airframe does not challenge that ruling.\
'

var WPFootnote6 = '                   The district court held that all claims of infringement\
against L-3 and Raytheon arising before September 6, 2006, the date\
of the New York action, were precluded. It permitted the suit to\
go forward as to any claims of infringement after that date. The\
remainder of the case was dismissed on April 7, 2009, after\
Airframe told the court it no longer intended to pursue those\
claims because discovery had revealed that Raytheon stopped using\
the modified program before selling AIS to L-3. \
'

var WPFootnote7 = '                   Airframe also tries to argue that because the New York\
suit was only directed against L-3, and L-3 only purchased AIS in\
2002, the New York suit was necessarily only about infringements\
after that date, whereas the present suit seeks to hold Raytheon\
accountable for earlier infringements as well. But that argument\
is plainly contradicted by the wording of Airframe\'s New York\
complaint, which accused L-3, through AIS, of conspiring with\
Stolarz to obtain the original source code and accused it of\
infringements thereafter. Airframe\'s imprecision as to the date\
when AIS obtained the source code, and the resulting question of\
whether this happened under Raytheon or L-3 ownership, does not\
change the essential nature of the claims.\
'

var WPFootnote8 = '                   For these reasons, even if Airframe had not waived any\
appeal from dismissal of L-3, the present suit against L-3 would\
still be precluded. Airframe\'s only argument as to L-3, asserted\
at oral argument in response to a question from the bench, was that\
the New York claims against L-3 involved infringement based on\
possession, whereas the present claims involved claims of\
infringing use. This is the same argument discussed and rejected\
above. Moreover, Airframe\'s admission that discovery revealed AIS\
had stopped using the modified software before the division was\
sold to L-3 would, in any event, appear to undercut all the factual\
predicates for the claim of infringing use against L-3 alleged in\
the Massachusetts complaint.\
'

var WPFootnote9 = '                   Though "[t]he judicial expansion of claim preclusion\
doctrine . . . has not gone unchecked," Negrón-Fuentes, 532 F.3d at\
10, cases like Taylor v. Sturgell, 128 S. Ct. 2161 (2008), have\
limited the circumstances under which nonparty plaintiffs are\
precluded from suing the same defendants, id. at 2172-75.\
'

var WPFootnote10 = '                   Those conditions were not met on the facts of Negrón-Fuentes, where we held that the plaintiff could maintain certain\
new claims against the additional defendants even assuming that\
those claims arose from the same transaction as the claims\
plaintiff had brought in his earlier, unsuccessful suit. 532 F.3d\
at 10. There, the plaintiff initially sued his employer and later\
brought ERISA claims against the administrators of plaintiff\'s\
health care plan. Id. at 9-10. But ERISA applies only to plan\
administrators, sponsors, and fiduciaries, and plaintiff could not\
have brought ERISA claims against his employer in the initial suit. \
Id. \
'

var WPFootnote11 = '                   Airframe also could have easily found out, through public\
filings and its own documentation of AIS software license renewals,\
that L-3 only acquired AIS in 2002. Airframe was likewise in a\
position to know that the source code had been transferred around\
1997, given that its complaint stated that its own former employee,\
Stolarz, apparently transferred the code.\
'

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