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Bloomberg Law and Law360 Highlight Partner Jeffery Cross' Representation of Card Shuffler Manufacturer and Its Distributer in Antitrust Case Against Scientific Games

On Monday, a federal judge in Chicago denied defendant Scientific Games Corp.’s summary judgment motion against Freeborn clients, plaintiffs Taiwan Fulgent Enterprise Co. and TCS John Huxley America Inc., in a Walker Process fraud and sham litigation patent antitrust case on statute of limitations and release defenses.

Freeborn previously tried a Walker Process patent fraud antitrust case against Scientific Games in the summer of 2018 involving automatic card shufflers for casinos to a jury here in federal court in Chicago.  The result was a $105 million verdict that was trebled under the antitrust laws.  This result was also the tenth largest federal jury verdict in 2018.

A different card shuffler manufacturer brought a similar antitrust suit against Scientific Games in March, 2019.  Scientific Games moved to dismiss the complaint based on the statute of limitations and a release from the settlement of the original patent infringement case in 2010.  The court denied the motion to dismiss  in March 2020 but allowed bifurcated discovery on these issues. In February, Scientific Games moved for summary judgment, alleging that the plaintiff knew it was injured and by whom prior to the four-year statute of limitations. 

However, yesterday, Judge John R. Blakey let the case move forward in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, holding that to know that patent infringement litigation caused antitrust injury, the plaintiff had to know that the defendant committed intentional fraud on the patent office. Only intentional fraud on the patent office strips away the immunity that a patent holder normally has to bring infringement litigation. Freeborn Partner Jeffery Cross is one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs and was instrumental in developing this legal theory.

This news was featured in Bloomberg Law and Law360.