En Banc: Did Ramey Appeal His Own Sanction?

by Dennis Crouch

This is the fourth post about VDPP, LLC v. Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., No. 2024-2226 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 19, 2026): that is a lot for this little case. The earlier ones covered Judge Rosenthal's 2024 sanctions order, the April 2026 oral argument, and the panel's licensee-marking holding.

This post is about part of the appeal that never reached the merits and is now the subject of an en banc rehearing petition. Chief Judge Moore, writing for the panel, dismissed William (Bill) Ramey's challenge to the $207k sanctions award entered against him personally, holding that his notices of appeal never made him an appellant.

Judge Rosenthal held VDPP and Ramey jointly and severally liable for Volkswagen's fees. She found the case exceptional because VDPP sued on an expired patent while demanding an injunction and future damages, pressed back damages it could not support under the marking statute, and concealed eleven settlement licenses that Volkswagen had pointed to four separate times before making false statements about them, misconduct that "infected the entire litigation."

On August 28 Ramey filed a combined petition for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc in his own name, signed "Counsel for William P. Ramey, III." Three days later he filed a second petition as counsel for VDPP.

The petition's central complaint is formally correct. Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 3(c)(7) provides that an appeal "must not be dismissed . . . for failure to name a party whose intent to appeal is otherwise clear from the notice," and that savings clause governs exactly the question the panel decided. The precedential opinion never cites it. But I don't think the omission is worth rehearing in this case.

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