With federal judges granting Section 101 patent eligibility motions at a 70 percent clip, it makes sense that patent holders would do anything to avoid them.

But the maker of the Jawbone fitness tracker has taken an apparently unprecedented step: Requesting a stay of its own patent infringement case against rival Fitbit Inc.

“This has been odd to me,” Judge Haywood Gilliam said at a hearing last month. “On the one hand we have the plaintiffs invoking the court's jurisdiction, and then immediately seeking a stay in favor of a later-filed ITC action.”