CLIFFORD A. LOWE, SPOTA LLC, fka Insite Solu- tions, LLC v. Shieldmark, Inc., Advanced Plastics, Inc., Crown Equipment Corporation

NOTE: This order is nonprecedential.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.
O R D E R
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: 1 Filed: 09/05/2025

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LOWE v. SHIELDMARK, INC. 2
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
1 See Lowe, 2025 WL 893211; Lowe v. ShieldMark,
Inc., No. 2021-2164, 2022 WL 636100 (Fed. Cir. Mar. 4,
2022); Lowe v. ShieldMark, Inc., No. 2022-2273, 2022 WL
17246331 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 28, 2022).
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LOWE v. SHIELDMARK, INC. 3
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.
239 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
2 This court vacated and remanded a separate
$4,750 sanctions award against Lowe regarding a motion
to seal an expert report. Lowe, 2025 WL 893211, at *10.
That sanctions award is no longer at issue.
3 Appeal No. 2023-1786, ECF No. 57 at 15–17.
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LOWE v. SHIELDMARK, INC. 4
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
4 The plaintiffs’ arguments misinterpret this court’s
prior decision and mandate. They argue that “[w]hat this
Court did not do on appeal, is determine whether the find-
ings of fact on which the sanctions award was made were
erroneous.” ECF No. 10 at 1. However, this court’s deci-
sion explained that “[f]actual findings underlying sanctions
based on the district court’s inherent powers are reviewed
for clear error” and that, after review, we “discern[ed] no
clear error in the district court’s finding[s].” Lowe, 2025
WL 893211, at *10. The plaintiffs also argue that they “did
not have an opportunity to argue these mistakes on appeal
because this Court first revealed them in its opinion.” ECF
No. 10 at 4. But the plaintiffs raised those purported mis-
takes in their petition for rehearing, which was denied. See
Retractable Techs., Inc. v. Becton Dickinson & Co., 757 F.3d
1366, 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2014).
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LOWE v. SHIELDMARK, INC. 5
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
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LOWE v. SHIELDMARK, INC. 6
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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LOWE v. SHIELDMARK, INC. 7
(3) Costs, but not attorney fees, will be awarded to the
defendants.
September 5, 2025
Date
FOR THE COURT
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