Opinions — Wednesday, July 15, 2026

The Second Circuit reversed the district court's dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction in this contract dispute between Northwell Health, a New York healthcare provider, and out-of-state Blue Cross Blue Shield licensees operating in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Northwell alleged that defendants underpaid over $5.5 million in insurance claims for care provided to defendants' insureds, many of whom were New York residents, seeking to enforce either the Provider Agreement between Northwell and Empire Blue Cross (the New York BCBS licensee) or quasi-contract theories. The district court had held that defendants' contacts with New York were too attenuated to support either personal jurisdiction or claims on the merits. The Second Circuit held that defendants purposefully availed themselves of New York under N.Y. C.P.L.R. § 302(a)(1) and satisfied due process by maintaining a long-standing business relationship with Empire to obtain preferential in-network prices for their insureds in New York. The court affirmed dismissal of Northwell's third-party beneficiary claims but reversed on Northwell's ratification-based contract theory and quasi-contract claims, remanding for further proceedings.

The decision matters for its expansive treatment of purposeful availment in the context of indirect market participation through intermediary relationships. The court rejected defendants' formalistic argument that § 302(a)(1) requires a direct contract with a New York entity, instead emphasizing that an intentional "course of dealing" using a New York intermediary can establish jurisdiction even when structured informally through licensing agreements with a national association. Drawing on correspondent-bank-account precedents, the court held that defendants' repeated use of Empire to process claims and facilitate access to New York's healthcare market constituted transacting business, particularly where defendants contracted with BCBSA expressly to provide "portability of membership" and allow insureds to access out-of-state care. The court characterized this as purposeful exploitation of New York's healthcare and insurance markets, finding that defendants' product was enhanced by their ability to offer predictable in-network rates in New York. Against defendants' argument that their insureds' unilateral decision to seek care in New York broke the jurisdictional chain, the court held that the combination of New York residency among insureds and defendants' extensive collaboration with a New York entity supported an inference of intentional market access, distinguishing cases involving nationwide auto insurance where no comparable network relationship existed.

The Federal Circuit vacated its own prior opinion and judgment in Amarin Pharma, Inc. v. Hikma Pharmaceuticals USA Inc., recalled its mandate, and remanded to the District of Delaware following a Supreme Court reversal. The appeal concerned a patent dispute between Amarin and Hikma, though the specific patent and legal issues are not detailed in this order.

The court issued this sua sponte order following the Supreme Court's decision in the same case, reinstating the appeal after its mandate had already issued. The order demonstrates the procedural mechanism by which the Federal Circuit implements Supreme Court reversals after it has completed its own appellate process, requiring the court to recall its mandate, vacate its prior decision, and remand for proceedings consistent with the higher court's ruling. The directive to the district court for further proceedings indicates the Supreme Court resolved a dispositive legal question that requires reconsideration of the case below.

In In re Zoho Corp. Pvt., Ltd., No. 2026-141, the Federal Circuit denied Zoho's petition for a writ of mandamus seeking to direct the Eastern District of Texas to vacate its order denying transfer and to transfer the patent infringement case to the Western District of Texas under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). The court, applying Fifth Circuit law, held that the magistrate judge did not clearly abuse its discretion or produce a patently erroneous result in denying transfer, finding that the bulk of relevant evidence and witnesses were located in India (equally inconvenient to both districts) and that judicial economy considerations slightly favored the Eastern District of Texas given overlapping co-pending litigation involving the same asserted patent.

The Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB's determination that ASSA ABLOY failed to prove claims of CPC Patent Technologies' '705 and '208 patents unpatentable for obviousness. The patents relate to biometric authentication and enrollment systems, and the key dispute centered on construction of "biometric signal" in limitations requiring the system to receive a series of biometric signal entries, map that series into an instruction, and populate a database accordingly. ASSA had petitioned for IPR based on Bianco and Mathiassen, but the Board found the enrollment process limitations not met under its construction that "biometric signal" means "a physical or behavioral biometric attribute."

The court's analysis turned on whether the Board's construction improperly excluded the specification's only disclosed enrollment embodiment—an administrator entering "dit, dit, dit, dah" finger presses of varying duration. The court held that the construction did not exclude this embodiment because the system continues reading fingerprints during enrollment (the specification indicates that mistimed presses are treated as authentication attempts, implying continuous biometric reading). The court also rejected ASSA's argument that the Board failed to address a Bianco-alone ground, finding that ASSA's petition relied entirely on the Bianco-Mathiassen combination for limitation D(2) and raised the standalone Bianco theory only belatedly in supplemental briefing following Director review, making it untimely under Corephotonics.