02-1564 ISI International, Inc. v. Borden Ladner Gervais, LLP.

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“The district judge concluded that the suit should proceed in Ontario not only because more potential witnesses are located in Canada than the United States but also because a Canadian court best knows the Canadian law of lawyer-client relations. Neither of these reasons is strong. Travel between Ontario and Illinois requires only a short and inexpensive journey; Ottawa is closer to Chicago than is New York City. Moreover, the district judge’s need to learn Canadian fiduciary law has a mirror image: if the suit proceeds in Canada, the Canadian judge may need to learn and apply the U.S. rules under the Lanham Act, which supplied the basis of federal jurisdiction. The Canadian law of attorney-client relations is hardly such an alien body of doctrine that only a judge steeped in its tradition could fathom its tenets. Nor is a U.S. judge’s desire to avoid the burden of mastering a new legal subject an adequate reason to send litigants packing. And although procedure in Canada departs in some respects from that in the United States, so there is a chance that some evidence admissible here would be inadmissible there, this also is a mirror image-not only with respect to admissibility questions but also with respect to compulsory process (some witnesses who could be compelled to appear in the United States could not be compelled to give live testimony in Canada, and the reverse). None of these considerations so strongly supports the Canadian venue that the plaintiff’s choice must be overridden.

“[T]he Lanham Act claim that justified the presence of this case in federal court turns out to be untenable. ISI International contends that Scott & Aylen violated §43(a)(1)(B), 15 U.S.C. §1125(a)(1)(B), by sending letters misleadingly asserting that ISI International lacks any right to license or practice Reitsma’s invention and falsely asserting that Reitsma himself had a patent. (Scott & Aylen concedes knowing that Reitsma never obtained a patent in his own name, although it represented otherwise in the letters sent to ISI International’s clients.) After our first decision in this case, First Health Group Corp. v. BCE Emergis Corp., 269 F.3d 800 (7th Cir. 2001), held that letters sent to customers do not come within the scope of §43(a)(1)(B)-which is limited to false or misleading ‘commercial advertising or promotion’ and does not cover all deceitful business practices. Recognition that ISI International’s Lanham Act claim fails on the merits does not deprive the district court of jurisdiction, for the claim was not frivolous, see Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 678 (1946), but it does deprive ISI International of any substantial interest in having the remainder of the suit resolved in federal court. Indeed, even if we were to declare that the district court abused its discretion by using the doctrine of forum non conveniens, that court would be free to relinquish supplemental jurisdiction now that the claim under federal law has been resolved, see 28 U.S.C. §1367(c)(3), a step that would have the same practical effect as the use of forum non conveniens.”

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Conlon, J., Easterbrook, J.