We've talked before about the Court's decision to award fees against Blackbird Tech LLC, based on Blackbird's "objectively baseless post-Markman litigation strategy."
Back in August, the Court ordered the parties to submit a stipulated fee amount, or for the defendant to submit a fee accounting. Since then, Defendant submitted a fee accounting showing $485,420.74 in fees, consisting of $404,734.68 for lead counsel and $80,686.06 for local counsel. Blackbird filed a very short statement opposing the fees amount.
The substance of Blackbird's statement is entirely redacted, but we can tell from the Court's order that they basically just argued that they are out of business:
Blackbird responded [to the fee accounting] with a "Statement" containing less than a page of text. (D.I. 275). Blackbird says it is out of business, has no assets, and is winding up under Massachusetts law.
M2M Solutions LLC v. Sierra Wireless America Inc., C.A. No. 14-1102-RGA, D.I. 279 at 1 (D. Del. Apr. 25, 2023).
The Court held that the fact that Blackbird is out of business has no impact on the fee award amount, but noted the (very, very likely) difficulty of collecting on fees:
That may all be true, but that does not state any reasons why I should not make the award. It merely suggests that collecting on the award may be difficult to impossible.
Id.
Redactions Strike Again
If you are someone who frequently files fee declarations after winning fee motions, you probably know that it can be tricky to support the reasonableness of fee requests. Most firms keep their rates close to the vest and aren't afraid to liberally redact them from filings.
You may be hoping to find some good information for your next fee motion in the fee briefing for this case. I'll save you the trouble—the defendants appear to have redacted every instance of their rates from the supporting documents.
(No, I'm not bitter about over-redaction, why do you ask?)
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