For many years, the prevailing view in D. Del. has been that "you get what you give" when it comes to contention discovery. In other words, if you want a defendant to serve detailed non-infringement contentions, your infringement contentions should have a similar level of detail.
This standard is built into several of the judges' form scheduling orders, including Judges Stark, Noreika, Burke, Fallon, and Hall. For example, Judge Burke's form provides that:
In the absence of agreement of the parties, contention interrogatories, if filed, shall first be addressed by the party with the burden of proof. The adequacy of all interrogatory answers shall, in part, be judged by the level of detail each party provides; i.e., the more detail a party provides, the more detail a party shall receive.
On Monday, Judge Burke issued an order illustrating the implications of this standard (and the importance of serving detailed contentions).
A defendant moved to compel a response to an interrogatory seeking the plaintiff's detailed validity contentions. Judge Burke granted the motion, but with a catch:
As for the portion of ROG 15 that asks Plaintiff to explain "why the portion(s) of the reference [] fail to disclose the limitation[,]" (id.), there Plaintiff must provide at least some answer regarding the "why[,]" though the level of specificity of such a response can mirror the level of specificity in Defendant's invalidity contentions (in other words, the "why" answer need not be particularly detailed, since in Defendant's invalidity contentions, Defendant simply quoted from a portion of the references at issue to explain why they read on certain claim limitations, and did not otherwise provide detailed indicia as to which portion of the quoted language tracks the key language of the limitation at issue).
So keep this in mind when drafting your own contentions. The more detail you provide, the more you can demand from the other side.
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