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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.
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 …

Just imports - no exports? No, he's an importer and exporter.

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 …

Five Candles
Steve Johnson, Unsplash

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. …

#EatFresh
#EatFresh AI-Generated, displayed with permission

Last week, while I was wrapping presents with all the care and skill of a subway sandwich artisan, Judge McCalla weighed in on the issue of whether a complaint can establish knowledge for the purpose of willfulness, dealing with a novel argument in the process.

To begin, he sided with Chief Judge Connolly and Judge Williams, holding that the complaint cannot establish knowledge for the purpose of a claim of willful infringement:

In other words, post-suit knowledge alone is insufficient to sustain a claim for willfulness even at the motion to dismiss stage

Aortic Innovations, LLC v. Edwards Lifesciences Corp., C.A. No. 23-158, D.I. 50 at 6 (D. Del. Dec. 8, 2023).

The …

Maybe leave the headphones at the office.
Maybe leave the headphones at the office. Christopher Gower, Unsplash

Earlier this year, the District of Delaware implemented a new policy of requiring bar cards, or an order from the Court, to bring electronics into the courthouse.

Courthouse staff have accepted out-of-state bar cards just fine. But one recurring issue is that some states simply do not issue bar cards, or only issue them optionally. Not all out-of-state attorneys have them.

As a result, in the lead up to hearings, parties often file stipulations or unopposed motions for leave for various people to bring electronics into the courthouse. The Court usually—but not always—grants these.

This post is just a reminder that, in such stipulations and motions, it's best …

Any time someone moves to withdraw, the question is: Will the client be able to convince the next set of lawyers that the client will pay?
Any time someone moves to withdraw, the question is: Will the client be able to convince the next set of lawyers that the client will pay? Micaela Parente, Unsplash

Having to move to withdraw because a client won't pay is the absolute worst. You have ethical duties to your client, but you can't work for free. You are stuck in a position where you need to tell the Court enough that it will let you out—but you can't tell it everything without violating the ethics rules. The local rules also place some procedural hoops in the way of a motion to withdraw. It's tricky!

Even worse is when the other side opposes your withdrawal, because then you are potentially …

Typically, if you want know how much the opposing counsel is spending on a case, you can come to a rough estimate based on how much they seem to be filing. Alternatively, you can just ask, which usually goes something like this:

Q. So . . . uh, how much are you spending?
A. None of your beeswax nerd.

Fin.

Hold your applause please
Hold your applause please AI-Generated, displayed with permission

Over the summer, however, there was a rather unique case where the Court ordered the production of documents showing the plaintiffs' costs of litigation thus far and future estimates.

It started with an offhanded request in a discovery dispute letter. The defendant requested production responsive to RFPs on litigation funding documents generally, which they claimed were "relevant to damages and, as this Court has found, for purposes of cross-examination about bias." Oasis Tooling, Inc. v. GlobalFoundries US Inc., C.A. No 22-312-CJB, D.I. 184. The briefing on the issue was no more than a quarter-page.

Judge Burke granted the motion—which at this point clearly implicate litigation costs—in a brief oral order. Id., D.I. 211. Thereafter plaintiff produced the litigation funding agreement (redacted to remove the expected spend at various case milestones) but refused to produce the actual invoices or provide an overall amount paid to date.

Hence another discovery dispute aimed at "enforcing" the Court's ...

I have no idea what the accused product looks like, but here is a
I have no idea what the accused product looks like, but here is a "viral whole-genome sequencing experiment." National Cancer Institute, Unsplash

Last month, Judge Williams granted a permanent injunction in Natera Inc. v. ArcherDX, Inc., C.A. No. 20-125-GBW (D. Del. Nov. 21, 2023). The Court unsealed the opinion on Friday, and I thought there were enough interesting things about it to warrant a short post.

The Court granted the injunction only in part, and permitted the defendant to continue using the personalized cancer monitoring product, referred to as "PCM," for "ongoing clinical trials, for updating old studies undergoing peer review, and for limited quality control." The parties also agreed that the injunction should exclude use …

Is 3.5 hours enough time for a battle of the experts?
Is 3.5 hours enough time for a battle of the experts? AI-Generated

Parties often offer expert declarations during the claim construction process.

These declarations can be of varying utility. Sometimes, parties offer a detailed and helpful explanation of how the technology works. Other times, parties offer a useless, conclusory expert declaration that says little more than "a person of ordinary skill in the art would understand the term to mean [whatever construction the attorneys who hired me proposed]."

But, while declarations are common, in my experience live testimony from experts during a Markman hearing is pretty rare in D. Del. That's why I thought it was worth noting that, this week, Judge Burke granted an opposed request to permit …