A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


CJB
The Honorable Christopher J. Burke

Judge Burke: Don't Just Say You're Burdened—Prove It

David M. Fry, Sept. 2, 2020
Discovery Dispute

Burden
Simon Migaj, Unsplash

Yesterday, Judge Burke ordered a plaintiff to collect documents from an additional custodian beyond the limit agreed to by the parties. But he also gave the plaintiff a road map for how they might have won with a little extra effort.

Judge Burke acknowledged that "the parties are not large companies, and that cost and burden were a factor in the parties' agreement to [a] seven-custodian limit in the first place."

But Plaintiff could have provided the Court with a record ... to help the Court conclude that the collection, search, review and production of [the custodian's] documents would be unduly burdensome or costly, or that it would be disproportionate to either the amount in controversy or …
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Judge Burke Sets Forth Views on Impermissible Discovery in Trade Secret Actions

Andrew E. Russell, Aug. 28, 2020
Discovery

Restricted Data Notice
"Restricted Data" stamp, RestrictedData, CC BY 2.0

In another part of the opinion mentioned earlier today, Judge Burke set forth his views on the scope of discovery in a trade secret action—an issue that comes up a lot, along with the related issue of the disclosure of the alleged trade secrets:

As to what is not relevant trade secret discovery: what [Plaintiff] is not entitled to do is to set out a claim in Count IX for trade secret misappropriation—i.e., a claim involving a certain set of alleged facts, occurring in a certain alleged time frame, involving a certain referenced set of persons and a certain type of purported misconduct—and then say to [Defendant], “Now that we have …
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The Court: Broad, General Interrogatories Merit Only Broad, General Answers

Andrew E. Russell, Aug. 28, 2020
Interrogatories Discovery

Judge Burke yesterday unsealed a lengthy opinion addressing a range of discovery disputes in a pending trade secret litigation.

In one instance, plaintiff sought to force a further response to a broad interrogatory, and complained that Defendant's broad answer omitted important time periods. The interrogatory asked:

[D]escribe in detail the stage of R&D, design, documentation, clinical work, marketing and/or sales of the [relevant product] at the time [Defendant] or anyone on behalf of [Defendant] was in first contact with any Former [Plaintiff] Employee . . . .

Judge Burke denied the request, noting that the time periods Plaintiff complained about were from before the alleged trade secret theft, and therefore it was not clear why they were relevant. He also …

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Judge Burke Rejects Attempt to Probe Communications with Prosecution Counsel

David M. Fry, Aug. 19, 2020
Privilege

You can't gain access to privileged communications by claiming your discovery request seeks "just the facts."

In a lengthy oral order yesterday, Judge Burke denied a motion to compel responses to interrogatories seeking plaintiffs' communications with their prosecution counsel.

For the first interrogatory, the decision was "not a difficult one." It sought "all facts" provided to prosecution counsel "regarding certain subject matter relevant to Defendants' inequitable conduct defenses and counterclaims." There's no way to respond to an interrogatory like this without revealing the substance of attorney-client communications.

The second was "a bit less sweeping[,]" but not by much. It asked the plaintiffs to identify all prior art and FDA correspondence provided to their prosecution counsel, including details like the day …

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Restraint in Claim Construction

Jeff Castellano, Aug. 11, 2020

"Plain and ordinary meaning" has a mixed record as a claim construction position. Despite the fact that the claim language itself is the heart of claim construction, litigants and judges may feel pressure to define claim language that is already reasonably clear, especially if there is a dispute tied to that language. In fact, judges in this District have expressly discouraged litigants from advancing "plain and ordinary meaning" as a proposed construction during the Markman process.

However, there is no reason that the language of the claim itself - if sufficiently clear - cannot stand on its own, even if there is a dispute. The challenge (and burden) for the Court lies in sorting through the alleged disputes, discarding those …

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Judges Connolly and Burke Hold That Arguments Omitted from Reply Are Conceded

Andrew E. Russell, June 26, 2020
Litigation Legal Writing

While we're talking about reply briefs—Judge Connolly this month affirmed Judge Burke's conclusion that a defendant had "abandoned" arguments that it set forth in its opening brief, because the defendant failed to further address those arguments in a reply after receiving pushback in the answering brief.

Here is what Judge Burke said:

In its opening brief, Defendants appeared to challenge these claims on two other grounds . . . . However, after Plaintiff pushed back on these issues in its answering brief, Defendants did not further address the issues in their reply brief. . . . Thus, Defendants have abandoned these arguments and the Court will not further address them herein.

Judge Connolly disagreed that such arguments are …

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Motion to Amend Filed Before Deadline Not Untimely

Andrew E. Russell, June 23, 2020
FRCP FRCP 15

The judges' form scheduling orders in D. Del. require deadlines for motions to amend, tracking FRCP 16(b)(3)(a), which says scheduling orders must limit the time to amend pleadings.

In an oral order on Friday, Judge Burke granted a motion to amend an answer that was filed on the day of the deadline set in the scheduling order.

He described how difficult it would be for a party to argue that a motion to amend was untimely when it was filed before the agreed-upon deadline:

It would be the unusual case where a Court had previously determined (at the parties' request) that amendment could be allowed by a certain date without causing harm to the case schedule, and yet …
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"Plausibility" Shows Its Teeth

Jeff Castellano, June 23, 2020
R&R MTD

Judge Burke's exacting standards regarding the sufficiency of pleadings in a patent case were on display in a recent R&R, in which he recommended dismissing indirect and willful infringement claims. This ruling demonstrates that although plaintiffs are not required to prove their case as the pleading stage, they are well advised to bolster their complaint with allegations that link the elements of their claims to specific facts.

The key passages of the 24-page R&R in Midwest Energy Emissions Corp. v. Vistra Energy Corp., C.A. No. 19-1334-RGA-CJB concern what makes an infringement claim "plausible" under the Twombly/Iqbal standard.

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"Though the Pennypack factors may be very forgiving, they are not a sieve."

Andrew E. Russell, June 19, 2020
Discovery Dispute Pennypack

This is not an illustration of the Pennypack factors in action
This is not an illustration of the Pennypack factors in action Lindsay Cotter, Unsplash

I just came across the above quote, which is from a discovery dispute back in April where Judge Burke struck a very-late-disclosed witness.

It's an interesting—and accurate—description of the Pennypack factors. Most DE patent litigators are familiar with Pennypack, which set forth a loose set of factors for deciding whether to apply the "extreme" sanction of excluding "critical" evidence. Meyers v. Pennypack Woods Home Ownership Ass’n, 559 F.2d 894, 905 (3d Cir. 1977).

Even though Pennypack issued way back in 1977, modified versions of its list of factors are still applied today. When they come up, they most often favor the party producing …

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