Last month we wrote about Judge Andrews' order that a plaintiff who won a default judgment against Aston Martin, LLC must file any settlement agreements from seven other patent suits, in order to help the Court determine the proper damages award.
Plaintiff has now responded.
We wondered in our last post whether the Court would permit plaintiff to file under seal. The answer is yes: the Court found the following short paragraph from the briefing to be sufficient to permit filing the settlement agreements and settlement amounts under seal:
Good cause exists to seal these Settlement and License Agreements. The Agreements contain confidentiality clauses such that if the documents were not filed under seal, Plaintiff might be in breach of the confidentiality clauses agreed to by the respective Parties.
That makes sense, but it is too bad, as settlement numbers are always interesting and rarely public.
Missing Settlement Agreements? Or With-Prejudice Dismissals with No Agreements?
It also looks like plaintiff filed only three settlement agreements from the seven listed cases, omitting several possible agreements without explanation, at least in the public version. These include two from cases dismissed with prejudice (C.A. Nos. 20-259, 20-260) and one from a case dismissed without prejudice (C.A. No. 17-1426).
I'm curious whether those defendants achieved walkaway dismissals without settlement agreements (with prejudice?) or if there was another reason that plaintiff omitted those agreements—perhaps it intends to argue that they aren't comparable. It's not clear whether that may be set forth in the non-public version of the filing.
We'll continue to keep an eye on this, and hopefully we'll see some numbers (or at least a damages figure derived from the numbers) if Judge Andrews ultimately issues a public decision on the damages amount.
If you enjoyed this post, consider subscribing to receive free e-mail updates about new posts.
