Case: 25-1913 Document: 12 Page: 1 Filed: 09/05/2025

NOTE: This order is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ______________________ CLIFFORD A. LOWE, SPOTA LLC, fka Insite Solu- tions, LLC, Plaintiffs-Appellants v. SHIELDMARK, INC., ADVANCED PLASTICS, INC., CROWN EQUIPMENT CORPORATION, Defendants-Appellees ______________________ 2025-1913 ______________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in No. 1:19-cv-00748-JG, Judge James S. Gwin. ______________________ ON MOTION ______________________ Before LOURIE, BRYSON, and REYNA, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

ORDER Plaintiffs Clifford A. Lowe and Spota LLC have ap- pealed from the district court’s denial of their motion under Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b) seeking relief from a sanctions award Case: 25-1913 Document: 12 Page: 2 Filed: 09/05/2025

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we previously affirmed in Lowe v. ShieldMark, Inc., No. 2023-1786, 2025 WL 893211 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 24, 2025). The defendants have moved to dismiss the appeal as frivolous and for sanctions under Fed. R. App. P. 38. The plaintiffs oppose that motion.

The background of this case is set out in three appeals decided by this court.1 Relevant here, in December 2021, Mr. Lowe assigned the asserted patent to Spota, and Spota thereafter licensed the patent to a third party. Based on those transactions, the district court concluded that both Mr. Lowe and Spota lost Article III standing to assert the patent. In the alternative, the court found that the as- serted patent claims were invalid. The court also awarded $213,765 in sanctions because the plaintiffs failed to timely disclose the ownership and license documents during dis- covery and filed an amended complaint that “explicitly mis- represented to Defendants and to [the District] Court the status of the patent.” Lowe, 2025 WL 893211, at *9 (quot- ing district court decision).

On appeal, we held that Spota had standing to sue, but Mr. Lowe did not. We then affirmed the district court’s in- validity ruling. As for the $213,765 sanction, we held that there was “no clear error in the district court’s finding of bad faith conduct by the plaintiffs that prejudiced the de- fendants.” Id. at *10. We explained that Mr. Lowe “lost Article III standing after the Assignment, and the plain- tiffs’ conduct delayed litigation with respect to Lowe’s pa- tent infringement claim.” Id. We therefore affirmed the sanctions award under the district court’s inherent

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authority. Id.2 Lowe petitioned for rehearing, arguing we should not have affirmed the sanctions award after finding Spota had standing because that meant “there was no de- lay in the litigation caused by Plaintiffs-Appellants in rightfully challenging” the decision dismissing both plain- tiffs for lack of standing;3 rehearing was denied.

After mandate issued, Lowe moved the district court for relief from the sanctions award, reasserting its argu- ment that “[a]ny delay in the proceedings was not the re- sult of Plaintiffs’ justified opposition to ShieldMark’s position that both Plaintiffs had lost standing.” Lowe v. ShieldMark, Inc. et al, 19-748, Dkt. No. 238-1 at 2 (N.D. Ohio). But the court found such relief foreclosed under this court’s mandate, explaining that this court “explicitly af- firmed the [District] Court’s judgment regarding sanc- tions under its inherent power . . . . Moreover, the Federal Circuit anticipated and expressly rejected the argument that Plaintiffs raise . . . . By emphasizing Plaintiff Lowe’s lack of standing, the Circuit indicated that Plaintiff Spota’s standing did not affect its sanction analysis.” Id., Dkt. No. at 4–5 (emphasis in original). Lowe appeals, and we have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(1).

We summarily affirm the district court’s decision be- cause there is no “substantial question regarding the out- come of the appeal.” Joshua v. United States, 17 F.3d 378, 380 (Fed. Cir. 1994). Under the mandate rule, “issues ac- tually decided on appeal—those within the scope of the judgment appealed from, minus those explicitly reserved or remanded by the court—are foreclosed from further

That sanctions award is no longer at issue.

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consideration.” Amado v. Microsoft Corp., 517 F.3d 1353, 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (cleaned up). Here, the district court was clearly correct that our mandate foreclosed further consideration of the sanctions award; we affirmed that award, despite concluding that Spota had standing, be- cause there was no clear error in the court’s findings re- garding the plaintiffs’ bad faith conduct that prejudiced the defendants, including the plaintiffs’ failure to timely sup- plement discovery responses and their misrepresentation of patent ownership in the Fourth Amended Complaint.

Lowe, 2025 WL 893211, at *9–10. The plaintiffs’ attempts to ward off summary disposition here are meritless.4 Setting aside the procedural problem that the mandate rule bars the relief the plaintiffs are seeking through their current appeal, the plaintiffs’ core contention on the merits is that the district court’s sanctions order was erroneously based on that court’s conclusion that if the plaintiffs had

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disclosed the information regarding the transactions of De- cember 2021, the defendants could have successfully moved for summary judgment at that time. Because this court subsequently held that the district court was wrong to conclude that those transactions deprived both Mr. Lowe and Spota of standing (rather than holding that only Mr. Lowe lost standing), the case could have proceeded with only Spota as the party with standing. In effect, the plain- tiffs are contending that the misconduct identified by the district court was harmless and that it was therefore im- proper for the district court to award monetary sanctions for that course of misconduct.

That argument, however, ignores the fact that the dis- trict court’s sanctions order was principally based on what the court found to be a course of bad faith conduct by the plaintiffs. That course of conduct included (1) failing to sat- isfy their discovery obligations with respect to the Decem- ber 2021 transfer documents, (2) denying the existence of those documents, and (3) as the district court found, “bla- tantly misrepresent[ing]” in the Fourth Amended Com- plaint filed on June 7, 2022, that “Lowe is the owner of all rights, title, and interest in and to the [asserted] patent [and Spota] is an exclusive licensee under the [asserted] patent,” and that “Lowe and [Spota] share rights of enforce- ment and recovery under the [asserted] patent.” Lowe v. ShieldMark, Inc., No. 19-748, Dkt. No. 224 at 8 (N.D. Ohio Apr. 21, 2023) (quoting Dkt. No. 127 at 3).

Even after the defendants independently discovered the December 9, 2021, patent assignment from Mr. Lowe to Spota in late June 2022, see id., Dkt. No. 150 at 3 & Exh.

A, the plaintiffs argued that the assignment did not deprive Mr. Lowe of standing, id., Dkt. No. 151 at 1. They based that argument on a “certain Patent License Agreement” be- tween Lowe and Spota, which they did not share with the defendants, but offered to make available to the court for in camera review. Id., Dkt. No. 151 at 1. When the defend- ants asked the court to order that the Patent License Case: 25-1913 Document: 12 Page: 6 Filed: 09/05/2025

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Agreement be produced to them, the court so directed. Id., Dkt. Nos. 153 and 154. The plaintiffs then sought recon- sideration of the court’s order and produced a highly re- dacted version of the Patent License Agreement. Id., Dkt.

Nos. 157 and 157-2. The defendants objected to the redac- tions, id., Dkt. No. 158, and the court ordered the plaintiffs to produce all documents related to the transfer of the as- serted patent, licensing of the asserted patent, or the right to enforce the asserted patent, id., Dkt. No. 159.

While the plaintiffs’ course of misconduct did not ulti- mately have the effect of depriving the defendants of the right to summary judgment on the entire case based on standing, it plainly affected the posture of the case with re- gard to Mr. Lowe’s standing, and it completely altered the manner and timing of the resolution of the standing issue before the district court.

We therefore grant the appellees’ motion to the extent that we summarily affirm the order of the district court denying the plaintiffs’ Rule 60(b) motion for relief from the judgment in this case.

Accordingly, IT IS ORDERED THAT: (1) The motion is granted to the extent the district court’s decision is summarily affirmed. (2) While the outcome of this appeal is not in doubt, we do not regard the appeal as so wholly frivolous that further sanctions should be imposed against the plaintiffs under Fed. R. App. P. 38.

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(3) Costs, but not attorney fees, will be awarded to the defendants.

FOR THE COURT

September 5, 2025 Date