We mentioned back in October that Judge Hall was confirmed to the District of Delaware. Today, the Court started re-assigning cases from existing judges to Judge Hall. These arrive as a simple one-sentence docket entry:
Case Reassigned to Judge Jennifer L. Hall. Please include the initials of the Judge (JLH) after the case number on all documents filed.
The re-assignments involve cases at multiple stages, including past the close of fact discovery, and cases where Judge Hall was not previously involved as a magistrate judge.
One common question I see is "why did our case get re-assigned"? We can all speculate, but I'm not sure it's safe to read anything into a re-assignment like this beyond "our case was re-assigned …
We've talked a lot about "plain meaning" constructions, and how our judges havesometimespushedback against parties who offer plain meaning constructions without any indication of what the actual meaning of the term is.
Magistrate Judge Fallon issued an R&R today on an offshoot of this issue. In PPC Broadband, Inc. v. Charles Industries, LLC, C.A. No. 22-1517-GBW-SRF (D. Del. Jan. 8, 2024), the parties disputed the construction of only a single term, "drop cable." Plaintiff proposed not construing the term at all, and offered a generic definition as an alternative. The defendant proposed a specific construction that added limitations to the claim.
The patent at issue is directed towards a wall-mounted box that …
The ITC is just, constantly issuing opinions. It's always "import this" and "don't export that." Frankly, I don't have the time for it.
That sands through the hourglass, so are the [copyrighted material redacted]Nathan Dumlao, Unsplash
On this historic day, however, Judge Wolson struck back against the relentless tide of ITC opinions. An act for which we at IP/DE will forever be grateful.
The issue came up in the context of a summary judgment opinion in Wirtgen America, Inc. v. Caterpillar, Inc., C.A. No. 17-770-JDW-MPT (D. Del. Jan 4, 2024) (Mem). The plaintiff there had previously prevailed at the ITC on one of the patents, and the ITC had issued (sigh) an exclusion order.
The plaintiff then moved for summary judgment of infringement, citing in support only the ITC's written decision. Judge Wolson, denied the motion:
The ITC’s decision is not factual evidence. It is, instead, a decision that weighs evidence and applies the law. Wirtgen’s reliance on the ITC decision as the sole evidence to support its argument means that I could deny the motion just for a failure of proof. But there are other problems as well.
Even if I treated the ITC’s decision as evidence, it would not suffice to carry Wirtgen’s burden. The decision is not binding on me. And the decision came in a different procedural posture. The ITC weighed the parties’ evidence and reached a conclusion, much like I would do after a bench trial. But, at this stage of the proceedings, I can’t weigh the evidence. Instead, I have to credit any contrary evidence that Caterpillar offers, and it has offered evidence . . .
Wirtgen, C.A. No. 17-770-JDW-MPT, at 10.
Let this serve as a reminder that we all have to keep fighting the good fight.
(Eds. Note - the ITC is actually pretty cool by the standards of IP courts and practitioners)
"Not invalid" may be a double negative, but it's definitely not the same as "valid."Markus Spiske, Unsplash
Chief Judge Connolly issued a short opinion this morning denying a motion for summary judgment that a patent was not patent ineligible, in C.R. Bard, Inc. v. Angiodynamics, Inc., C.A. No. 20-1544-CFC-SRF (D. Del. Jan. 3, 2024).
In short, the patentee had previously succeeded on the issue of § 101 ineligibility at the Federal Circuit, which reversed a lower-court finding of ineligibility and held that:
[T]he asserted claims in Bard’s three patents are directed to eligible subject matter under § 101.
C.R. Bard, Inc. v. Med. Components, Inc., C.A. Nos. 2022-1136, 2022-1186, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS …
During our long break, when Andrew and I languished upon a beach, trading daiquiri recipes across a bridge table whilst a jazz band played Auld Lang Syne on repeat (they seemed quite uncomfortable in their tuxedos), Judge Bryson brought us an opinion with a new twist on an old PO dispute.
Is this what my life would be like were it not for the blog?AI-Generated, displayed with permission
The Plaintiff in Rheault v. Halma Holdings Inc., C.A. No. 23-700-WCB, was not a corporation. He was just a dude . . . named Rheault. The parties disputed whether Rheault could have access to all of the information produced by the defendants in the action, or if there should be some separate attorney's eyes only tier that he was not privy too.
As Judge Bruson noted, a dispute about whether a particular person should have access to the most confidential documents usually depends upon whether that person is a "competitive decisionmaker."
The question whether a particular individual should be allowed access to highly confidential materials has arisen in a number of cases. Such cases often involve the question whether certain employees of a party, such as in-house counsel, should be permitted access to materials with that designation. The answer to that question typically turns on whether the employees in question are involved in competitive decisionmaking on behalf of the party. If so, those employees are typically barred from having access to materials designated as highly confidential. If not, they are often allowed access to those materials.
Rheault v. Halma Holdings Inc., C.A. No. 23-700-WCB, at 2 (D. Del. Dec. 22, 2023) (Mem. Op.)
Here, however, Rheault was a guy. Presumably he makes his own day to day decisions about whether to go to Arby's or Fudruckers (Arby's), but he wasn't involved in the operation of any particular company (the dispute actually centered upon the contract selling his company to the defendants).
Judge Bryson found this point dispositive, at least in the absence of any evidence that he would rejoin the market imminently and compete with the defendants:
Given that there is no evidence that Mr. Rheault intends to resume activity in his former field of business and that the defendants have not shown any other reason why Mr. Rheault should be denied access to the materials designated as “Highly Confidential—Attorneys’ Eyes Only,” I conclude that the defendants have not satisfied their burden of showing entitlement to the restrictive protective order they have requested.
The District of Delaware's Default Standard for Discovery requires contentions in patent cases.
One common Delaware counsel question is: what level of detail is required for contentions?
The answer varies on what the concern is. There is a certain level of detail that will probably preclude the Court from ordering you to supplement your contentions—but providing just that bare level of detail may not be enough to preserve all arguments that you later want to make.
On Monday, Judge Burke denied a motion to strike invalidity contentions where a party had disclosed an obviousness theory as to a patent based on modification of a prior art reference, but had not disclosed their intent to cite and rely on their own product as evidence that the modification was obvious.
The plaintiff had moved to strike the discussion of the defendants' own product from their expert reports, on the theory that their contentions failed to to disclose their intent to use that product in their obviousness analysis. Judge Burke denied the motion, and explained that a party need not disclose all evidence in support of its contentions:
Although this is a difficult issue, the Court is not prepared to say that Defendants' actions amounted to an untimely disclosure. This is because Defendants have affirmatively represented that they are not relying on the direct aortic Engager system as prior art itself; instead, they rely on it only as a piece of evidence that will be used to "show that a direct aortic version would have been an obvious modification to Engager 3.0 at the relevant time." (D.I. 361 at 2) In other words, Defendants are relying on the system simply as evidence in support of a theory that was itself timely disclosed. And as Defendants note, courts generally hold that: (a) in validity-related or infringement-related contentions, a party is not required to cite to every piece of evidence that will be used to support a given theory; and (b) it is proper for an expert to expand upon such theories in his expert report. . . . The Court also notes that it is not as if Plaintiff had zero prior knowledge of the existence of the [Defendants'] system. As Defendants point out, they produced documents in discovery regarding this system, and their engineers testified at some length about the device during depositions. . . . (4) In light of the above, the Court cannot say that Defendants' conduct amounts to untimely disclosure that should be stricken.
Speyside Medical, LLC v. Medtronic CoreValve LLC, C.A. No. 20-361, D.I. 447 (D. Del. Dec. 18, 2023).
In my view, the Court is not saying that no evidence at all needs to be disclosed in support of the contentions—just that this particular evidence went beyond what was necessary, under the facts of the case.
Dauberts, especially of technical experts, are notoriously difficult. An error needs to be pretty blatant for the Court to find that it's not mere grounds for cross-examination. Moreover, it tends to be hard to find something useful to cite in a Daubert brief because the inquiry is often very fact-specific.
Thankfully we have Judge Bryson's opinion in Prolitec Inc. v. ScentAir Technologies, LLC, C.A. No. 20-984-WCB (D. Del. Dec. 13, 2023) (Mem. Op.), which sets forth a pretty bright line rule on a technical failure that warrants exclusion—failure to use a control in an experiment.
AI-Generated, displayed with permission
The specific experiment at issue was elegant in its awfulness. The claims required that the lid to a device have a "tortuous passage" that assisted in preventing leakage. To test if the accused product's tortuous passage prevented leakage, the plaintiffs' expert filled up the device, turned it on its side and checked for leaks. Finding none, he opined that the passage prevented leakage.
Judge Bryson noted the obvious flaw in this test and excluded the experts opinion:
ScentAir’s third and most telling objection is that Dr. Hultmark did not also test a device similar to the Breeze cartridge but lacking a tortuous passage, in order to determine whether that device would leak when filled 45 percent full of fragrance oil and placed on its side . . . .Given that there was no control for Dr. Hultmark’s test, the fact that the Breeze product did not leak under those conditions does not show that it was the tortuous passage in the Breeze cartridge that was responsible for the absence of leakage. Because Prolitec has failed to provide a satisfactory answer to this flaw in Testing Configuration 1, I find that the evidence regarding that test would not be helpful to the jury, and the evidence will therefore be excluded.
Id. at 28-29.
That's about as straightforward a Daubert ruling as I've ever seen. I'll hope to cite it myself soon (enemies beware!)
It's impressive when an attorney files a short letter and gets the Court to do something that it is not often inclined to do.Immo Wegmann, Unsplash
The District of Delaware generally suspended its mediation program in 2021, and mediations before a magistrate judge rarely happen in patent cases these days (although they do sometimes happen in some other cases, such as employment cases).
Since then, parties have sometimes moved to private mediations—especially when ordered to—but generally in my experience the overall number of cases that go through mediation has declined, and there aren't a huge number of local patent-case mediators.
When we last discussed this, we noted from comments at the 2023 Bench and Bar conference that …
Judge Choe-Groves, of the Court of International Trade, has been newly added to the list of Delaware’s visiting judges. In early November, she was reassigned a first handful of cases.
[Thanks to an unnamed colleague who mentioned this fact in passing today and expressed surprise that we hadn’t highlighted it on the blog. Keep giving us feedback - we love it!]
Judge Choe-Groves has served as a visiting judge in several other jurisdictions including the Southern District of New York, District of Idaho, Northern District of Oklahoma, and United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Not all of Judge Choe-Groves’ visiting assignments have been patent cases. In fact, most of her earlier assignments appear to be …
Chief Judge Connolly's scheduling order requires parties to rank their Daubert motions, and gives the Court the discretion to automatically deny all lower-ranked motions if it denies any one motion. In other words, if a party files five Daubert motions, and the Court grants the first-ranked motion but denies the second, the Court can then deny motions three, four, and five:
If the Court decides to deny a motion filed by the party, barring exceptional reasons determined sua sponte by the Court, the Court will not review any further Daubert motions filed by the party.
It has a similar provision for summary judgment motions Thus, it's important that parties split up their motions and rank them. …
This blog is for general informational purposes. It is not an offer to perform legal services, and should not be considered a substitute for legal advice. Nothing in this blog should be construed as forming an attorney-client relationship. If you have legal questions, please consult counsel in your jurisdiction.
![That sands through the hourglass, so are the [copyrighted material redacted]](https://bd6f.s3.amazonaws.com/media/images/nathan-dumlao-5Hl5reICevY-unsplash.max-640x360.webp)
