94
Opinion of the Court
same as the necessary resolution of a counterclaim for a declaratory judgment.
In Altvater, as here, the defendant did file a counterclaim seeking a declaratory judgment that the patent was invalid. The District Court found no infringement, but also granted the declaratory judgment requested by the defendant. The Court of Appeals affirmed the noninfringement holding but, reasoning that the validity issue was therefore moot, vacated the declaratory judgment. We reversed. Distinguishing our holding in Electrical Fittings, we wrote:
"To hold a patent valid if it is not infringed is to decide a hypothetical case. But the situation in the present case is quite different. We have here not only bill and answer but a counterclaim. Though the decision of non-infringement disposes of the bill and answer, it does not dispose of the counterclaim which raises the question of validity. . . . [T]he issue of validity may be raised by a counterclaim in an infringement suit. The requirements of case or controversy are of course no less strict under the Declaratory Judgments Act (48 Stat. 955, 28 U. S. C. § 400) than in case of other suits. But we are of the view that the issues raised by the present counter-claim were justiciable and that the controversy between the parties did not come to an end on the dismissal of the bill for non-infringement, since their dispute went beyond the single claim and the particular accused devices involved in that suit." 319 U. S., at 363-364 (footnotes omitted; citations omitted).
Presumably because we emphasized, in the last clause quoted, the ongoing nature of the Altvater parties' dispute, the Federal Circuit has assumed that a defendant's counter-claim under the Declaratory Judgment Act should always be
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