A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


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Tobias Eggerman, Unsplash

Depositions have been especially hard during the pandemic. Luckily, the quick proliferation of Zoom and its competitors have made it possible to take remote depositions that roughly approximate the experience of angrily objecting across a conference table.

International depositions, however, have remained problematic. In the past, witnesses could simply be shuffled from a country with hugely restrictive deposition procedures to a more friendly jurisdiction -- be it the Netherlands, the UK, a consulate, or even beautiful Delaware.

Travel restrictions and the closing of consular offices have made this a non-starter in many cases and so there has been a bit of a resurgence in proceedings under the Hague as parties struggle to get what discovery they …

The first part of this headline is no surprise. As long as a motion to amend is filed before the deadline in the scheduling order, it's very hard to lose. In fact, Judge Andrews didn't even issue a written opinion on this one (another plug for the importance of monitoring oral orders in D. Del.):

I do not see undue delay, and Defendant basically concedes that any prejudice can be pretty easily ameliorated. The Court is not concerned about the prospect of a five-day trial with seven patents from seven families. That scenario will never come to pass.

The surprising part is what happened next. After dismissing the defendant's concerns, Judge Andrews ordered the plaintiffs to narrow their …

Envelope with Letter
Brando Makes Branding, Unsplash

One common question for local counsel is "can we file something asking the Court to rule on our motion"? And the answer is usually something along the lines of "no," except in certain situations.

Last week we wrote about an example of the risks of an unwarranted request to expedite consideration of a motion.

This week I saw an example of a letter near the other end of the spectrum, in which a party asked gently urged the Court to consider a pending motion and got a good result.

A Letter That Worked

Plaintiff had moved for leave to amend their complaint to add two patents to a five-patent case, where all of the …

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Wilmington, DE Andrew Russell, CC BY 2.0

As we noted recently, Chief Judge Stark has a practice of holding "§ 101 days," in which he hears oral argument on a number of § 101 motions all at once, each from a different case. He typically issues decisions from the bench regarding each motion—which is always exciting—and follows up later with a written decision.

At first it seemed that § 101 days tended to be fatal for the patents involved, but more recent hearings have shown otherwise.

On Friday, Chief Judge Stark posted the schedule and public access information for his next § 101 day, set …

Piper Saratoga Plane
Alan Lebeda, CC BY 2.0

Last week, Judge Andrews granted a motion for reargument in a products liability diversity action, permitting further argument on summary judgment after the Court had previously ended the case by finding against plaintiff at summary judgment.

In its original opinion, nearly a year ago, the Court found that a federal statute that limits products liability for aircraft parts manufacturers blocked recovery here, and entered a judgment for defendant on all claims.

Plaintiff's motion for reargument asserted that, in addition to bringing actions against defendant as a "manufacturer," it had asserted claims based on the defendant's role as a "rebuilder and seller" of airline parts, and then detailed an argument based on the statutory language, …

Given that we've devoted a good deal of coverage to redaction requests in the last few months, I thought it might be useful to present a brief primer on the procedure for actually requesting redactions to a transcript in the District of Delaware.

This procedure cannot be found in either either the local rules or the Court's CM/ECF procedures. Instead, it comes from the Court's "Policy on the Electronic Availability of Transcripts of Court Proceedings."

Under this policy the process begins when the court reporter dockets the transcript, which looks like this:

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Nate Hoeschen

After that, things get a bit murky.

So I Have 21 Days to Request Redactions?

First off, that 21-day deadline ("Redaction Request Due 3/22") is actually …

Money
Pepi Stojanovski, Unsplash

It's a tough scenario: you think your opponent might have assigned away their patent rights, but you aren't exactly sure. And the only way you could know for sure is with information you don't have.

Most of the time in D. Del., disputes like this are addressed in a hearing transcript or an oral order. They don't make headlines, and they never hit Lexis or Westlaw, but they often provide helpful guidance for the future.

Yesterday, Judge Burke issued an oral order denying a request to compel a plaintiff to turn over its litigation funding documents. The defendants knew that the plaintiff had third-party litigation funding (and suspected that there might have been some assignment of …

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The Met

Yesterday, Judge Noreika denied an early Section 101 challenge to two patents-in-suit, in light of a factual dispute regarding unconventionality of certain aspects of the claimed invention.

Although plaintiff managed to survive the § 101 motion, it failed to meet the relatively un-demanding standard for pleading direct infringement – a test that would have been satisfied if the plaintiff had simply "identified the . . . accused products and alleged that the accused products met 'each and every element of at least one claim' of the asserted patents, either literally or equivalently." ...

Calendar
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As we previously mentioned, the Court has suspended all non-emergency jury trials until April 5, 2021, and has stated that, at least initially, it will permit only one jury trial to proceed at a time.

The Court tried repeatedly to re-start jury trials in November and continuing through early February—and got so far as jury selection—but ultimately all of the cases scheduled for trial either resolved or were delayed, mostly due to coronavirus concerns among the parties. At this point, the Court has recognized that, once jury trials restart, the trial calendar is looking extremely congested.

The Court Has Not Canceled All April Jury Trials (Yet)

Currently, there are two …