The Court seems to be trending towards holding that patent claims dropped during the claim narrowing process are gone for good.
Yesterday, in Nexus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Exela Pharma Sciences, LLC, C.A. No. 22-1233-GBW (D. Del.), Judge Williams held that a patentee cannot re-assert claims that it dropped prior to trial:
[T]his Court . . . finds that the case narrowing process in the instant action was even-handed and fair since it required Nexus to narrow its asserted claims and required Exela to narrow its asserted defenses. The fact that Nexus was unsuccessful at trial should not allow Nexus to get a second bite at the apple by now asserting those claims that …
This was meant to be more "Jaws" and less "get off my lawn you dang kids" but I can't be bothered to mess with the prompt anymore. A reminder that we are currently accepting applications for the official IP/DE cartoonistAI-Generated, displayed with permission
Today's strand in the tale is an abject lesson in the way certain cases can follow you around for years after they've ostensibly died. It comes to us by way of a pro hac motion, of all things. Filed without fanfare and totally unopposed, one would have expected it to be granted within a day or so.
Things went a little differently in WirelessWerx IP, LLC v. Tracki Inc., C.A. No. 25-799-CFC (D. Del. Oct. 17, 2025) where an unopposed pro hac motion sat dormant for a full 11 days until the Court issued this ominous Oral Order:
So that the Court may properly consider Plaintiff's application for the pro hac admission of William Ramey, it is HEREBY ORDERED that Mr. Ramey shall file with the Court no later than October 31, 2025 a sworn declaration in which he (1) identifies all the cases he has participated in or is currently participating in as counsel of record in this District and (2) avers whether he has ever been found by a court or state bar disciplinary body to have violated a rule, order, code, or norm of professional conduct. If Mr. Ramey has been found by a court or state bar disciplinary body to have violated a rule, order, code, or norm of professional conduct, he shall identify in the declaration the court or disciplinary body as the case may be and the date and nature of the finding and he shall submit with the declaration a copy of any order, opinion, or other document issued by the court or state bar disciplinary body in connection with that finding.
This is the first time I've seen an order like this. Me being a reporter (sorta), I looked to see what the lawyer's history was in the district. Unsurprisingly, an old Mavexar case popped up.
Counsel in question represented plaintiffs in a series of cases around the time of the Mavexar hearings, including Missed Call, LLC v. Freshworks Inc., C.A. No. 22-739-CFC. In that case, counsel failed to attend a scheduled in-person hearing. This led Chief Judge Connolly to order ...
Here at IPDE, our posts often fall into a few distinct categories. The most common type of post is "look at this interesting opinion that issued! Here is what happened, along with some context and meta-commentary."
(The second most common is probably some variation on "look at this Pennypack decision!" or "here is yet another post about redactions"—but we'll set those aside for now).
My favorite kind of post that we do, though, are our broader discussions that cut across multiple cases or judges, that address a fundamental District of Delaware practices, or that are just helpful tips for attorneys.
Hearings on motions for summary judgment in patent cases in the District of Delaware can vary in length, but they are typically measured in hours, rather than days.
That's why it was interesting to see the below order by Judge Burke in Scale Biosciences, Inc. v. Parse Biosciences, Inc., C.A. No. 22-1597-CJB (D. Del.) earlier this week.
In it, the Court cancelled a trial set to start Monday, and instead scheduled almost three full days' worth of hearings next week on six pending motions for summary judgment, plus two other motions:
ORAL ORDER: For the reasons discussed with the parties at last Friday’s hearing, the trial previously scheduled to begin on October 20, …
As a brief refresher, that case dealt with a claim that airSlate breached a settlement agreement resolving a trademark dispute. In filing the complaint, Inkit included an almost totally unredacted version of the settlement agreement, which had a confidentiality provision. Accordingly, airSlate counterclaimed for breach of the confidentiality provision.
Classic lawyer stuffAI-Generated, displayed with permission
At the time, the Court had ruled on summary judgment that all the elements of breach were proven except for damages (naturally a pretty tough thing to prove in this situation absent an actual settlement offer from another party asking for the …
We've talked a lot about how hard it can be to plead indirect infringement and willfulness before Chief Judge Connolly. He set forth his views on the subject in ZapFraud, Inc. v. Barracuda Networks, Inc., C.A. No. 19-1687-CFC-CJB (Mar. 24, 2021), where he held that a complaint cannot form the basis for an allegation of willful infringement in the same action:
[I]n the absence of binding authority to the contrary from the Federal Circuit and Supreme Court, I will adopt the rule that the operative complaint in a lawsuit fails to state a claim for indirect patent infringement where the defendant's alleged knowledge of the asserted patents is based solely on the content of that …
At the time, most of the plaintiffs agreed to hearings and trials in Texas, while most defendants did not. There was no case where both parties assented to trial in Texas, but there were a few where the parties agreed to pretrial hearings there.
Just last week, Judge Barker entered a new order in several cases with pending motions that gave the parties a few more venue options:
Now before the court is a motion to dismiss for failure …
One common question in D. Del. cases is whether or not the plaintiff or counterclaim plaintiff must bring its witnesses to Delaware for deposition.
You'd think this would be completely settled by this point, but it still seems to come up from time to time. This post collects some of the relevant authority (Ctrl-D or ⌘-D to bookmark) and talks about a new opinion on this from last week.
Plaintiffs Must Bring Their Witnesses Here for Deposition
Several cases have held that, by default, a plaintiff must bring its "witnesses" here to the District of Delaware for deposition:
The general rule with respect to the location of depositions is that the plaintiff must produce its …
This is a USB hub, not the kind of "hub" involved in the patent suit.Mac Care, Unsplash
In Aylo Freesites Ltd v. Dish Technologies LLC, C.A. No. 24-086-GBW (D. Del.), the plaintiff had originally brought a declaratory judgment claim in N.D. Cal., which was dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction.
The accused infringer then filed suit here in Delaware. That same day, the patentee filed a complaint in the District of Utah, where it had also previously sued some related entities. Both of the D. Utah cases are stayed pending IPR.
The patentee then moved to transfer the DJ complaint from D. Del. to the District of Utah.
Coordination is a difficult concept to quantify. It's pretty easy to measure speed or strength or flexibility. But coordination is more domain dependent. As an example, I would bet that I am not the fastest, strongest or tallest lawyer in Delaware—but I will place $20 on myself in a game of horse against any DE lawyer. I extend this to a game of make it take it to any lawyer over 30 who promises they cannot dunk. DM me for deets.
In the patent law context, coordination is similarly vague. A plaintiff accuses multiple defendants with somewhat different products of infringing the same patents. It makes sense to have discovery all go together, but come trial, things often fall apart a bit as the parties argue over how distinct the cases really are.
Today's case is one of the few I've seen where the Court sua sponte raised the issue of how similar 2 related cases really are. TOT Power Control, S.L. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., C.A. No. 21-1305-MN, D.I. 290 (D. Del. Sep. 29, 2025), was related to a very similar case against Apple that had recently gone to trial and was currently in the midst of the usual JMOL/New trial briefing. Although trial was already scheduled in the Samsung case, Judge Noreika entered an order ...
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