A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


DED
United States District Court for the District of Delaware

I'm not sure if
I'm not sure if "Ddrops" stands for "dew drops." But this is a nice picture regardless. Aaron Burden, Unsplash

We've talked about how pre-institution stays can be tough (but not impossible) to achieve, and about how Judge Burke has sometimes responded to a pre-institution motion to stay by asking for a status report and abbreviated briefing after the institution decision:

Therefore, no later than five business days after the PTAB rules on whether it will institute IPR as to the last of the petitions at issue, the parties shall provide the Court with a status report of no more than two single-spaced pages, indicating the outcome of the petitions and whether Defendant wishes to renew its Motion. If Defendant does wish to renew the Motion then, the Court will set a further (truncated) briefing schedule.

eBuddy Technologies B.V. v. LinkedIn Corporation, C.A. No. 20-1501-RGA-CJB, D.I. 108 (D. Del. Mar. 4, 2022) (Burke, J.).

Last week, Judge Williams adopted a similar view, denying a pre-institution motion to stay but offering to revisit the issue after the institution decision—and to take the previous briefing into account:

ORAL ORDER: Having reviewed Defendant MOM Enterprises, LLC's ("MOM") Motion to Stay Pending Inter Partes Review ("IPR") . . . , IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the Motion is DENIED WITHOUT PREJUDICE to renew the request if the IPR is instituted. A court has discretionary authority to grant a motion to stay. . . . Because no institution decision has yet been issued, the Court will decline to stay the case until it hears from the PTAB. . . . By no later than five (5) business days after the PTAB issues its institution decision as to the IPR petition relating to the asserted patent, the parties shall file a joint letter updating the Court on the results of the PTAB's decision. If the PTAB grants the IPR petition, and if MOM then wishes to renew its Motion, MOM should include in the joint letter a statement that it intends to renew its Motion. The Court will then set a letter briefing schedule on the renewed Motion. When reviewing the renewed Motion, the Court will take into account the briefs already filed as to the instant Motion. ORDERED by Judge Gregory B. Williams on 8/25/2023.

Ddrops Company v. MOM Enterprises, LLC, C.A. No. 22-332-GBW, D.I. 108 (D. Del. Aug. 25, 2023). This mirrors Judge Burke's previous order, although Judge Williams' order doesn't state whether the later briefing will be truncated—that may depend on the circumstances.

Judge Williams' practice is useful to know because, obviously, it affects the calculus of whether it is worthwhile to bring a pre-institution stay motion at all.

Local Rule 7.1.5 governs motions for reargument, sometimes styled as motions for “reconsideration.” As we’ve noted, the deadline to move for reargument or reconsideration can be easy to miss. The deadline is just 14 days after the order or opinion, and there are no CMECF reminders to flag it for counsel.

What Is a motion for reargument?

A request for “clarification” of the Court’s prior order may be interpreted as a motion for reargument/reconsideration. But a motion for reargument is not a do-over. In fact, you cannot rehash arguments you already made—and you cannot make new arguments you could have raised earlier.

Erasers
Mick Haupt, Unsplash

The scope of a motion for reargument is very narrow, and must show at …

As we've covered exhaustively in the past, it's becoming increasingly rare for Delaware Judges to consider indefiniteness at Markman, and it's rarer still to see someone get over the hump and knock a patent out.

AI-Generated, displayed with permission

Judge Andrews, however, is still willing to show a patent who's the boss at Markman (even for a non means-plus-function claim) as demonstrated this week in Genzyme Corp. v. Novartis Gene Therapies, Inc., C.A. No. 21-1736-RGA (D. Del. August 18, 2023).

The term at issue was, unsurprisingly, opaque:

Forms intrastrand base pairs such that expression of a coding region of [a] heterologous sequence is enhanced relative to a second rAAV vector that lacks sufficient intrastrand base pairing to …

Better $200/day than cell block 200, I suppose.
Better $200/day than cell block 200, I suppose. Kenny Eliason, Unsplash

When we last wrote about Mavexar, Chief Judge Connolly had held a civil contempt hearing after he ordered the sole member of Backertop, a Mavexar-related LLC, to appear in-person in Delaware and she failed to appear (she instead initiated a head-on challenge to the authority of the Court). She likewise failed to appear for her contempt hearing.

Today, the Court issued its opinion and order, holding the witness in contempt. It handily dispatched with each of the witness' arguments against the hearing.

It easily rejected their first argument—that the Court lacks jurisdiction after the entity, Backertop Licensing LLC, dismissed it's complaint. The Court reiterated the same ruling it made last time.

Next, the Court easily rejected the idea that civil contempt is "meant to benefit the complainant," citing multiple U.S. Supreme Court opinions to the contrary. It also rejected the idea that a party can re-litigate the underlying order in context of a contempt proceeding.

I found the Court's discussion of the alleged Fifth Amendment violation interesting, particularly when the Court attempts to identify exactly which Fifth Amendment right it could possibly have ...

AI-Generated, displayed with permission

Often times the hard part of a stipulation is just convincing everyone that they're not secretly giving up the farm. Lawyers are used to looking for hidden hooks in every proffered bite, and it's hard to convince us that this one is just tasty fish. We've all heard some scary store about a stipulation that gave away too much and changed the course of a case.

This is one of those stories . . .

But it turns out fine in the end.

UCB, Inc. et al v. Annora Pharma Private Ltd., C.A. No. 20-987-CFC (D. Del. Aug. 16, 2023), dealt with a patent for an anti-seizure drug compound. The defendants conceded infringement, …

annie-spratt-AFB6S2kibuk-unsplash
Annie Spratt, Unsplash

It's not uncommon to see discovery requests and 30(b)(6) topics asking about the location of documents. In fact, up until 2015, Rule 26 specifically provided for this kind of discovery:

Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense--including the existence, description, nature, custody, condition, and location of any documents or other tangible things . . . .

FRCP 26 (2014).

In 2015, in a (highly commendable) effort to shorten Rule 26, that example was dropped. Now it just reads:

Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any party's claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case . . …

Broken
CHUTTERSNAP, Unsplash

Ouch. That's something you never want to see.

We wrote last week about how Judge Andrews—somewhat surprisingly—declined to lift a stay after the PTAB left just 4 of 83 patents standing, and invalidated the rest.

After that decision, the parties filed a series of letters that clarified that the plaintiff had intended to proceed only on the four valid patents, not the rest, but wanted to check with the Court regarding how they should proceed:

[Plaintiff] Cytiva understood that the litigation would proceed only with regard to the four claims that the PTAB upheld as valid, and until JSR’s submission, was not aware that JSR had a contrary view. Cytiva had no intention, and has no intention, …

Michał Mancewicz, Unsplash

One of the more common issues to come up at trial is whether an to what degree an expert can exceed what is in their report. I've heard varying opinions on this from judges in Delaware and elsewhere. Some judges hold experts pretty tightly to their report; others apply something more akin to notice pleading, where the expert merely has to stay within the broad outline of what was addressed.

If you're going to have an expert on either side at trial, it's a good idea to know where your judge stands on this issue beforehand. We got a data point from Judge Andrews on this last week, when he issued a memorandum order on a …

Six
Arisa Chattasa, Unsplash

Here's another interesting order from when we were out. In it, Judge Burke notes a new procedure where he hears oral argument on only six claim terms at the Markman hearing:

ORAL ORDER: The Court hereby ORDERS as follows with respect to the upcoming Markman hearing: (1) The Court will adopt the parties' prior proposal with respect to the length and order of argument. . . . (2) However, it has been the Court's recent practice to hear argument on only six terms/term sets ("terms"). So, by no later than August 11, 2023, the parties shall submit a joint letter telling the Court which terms will be taken on the papers and which six terms will …

Bonjour dear readers! I have missed you all so. The blog vacation has been a real boon for us, and we've got a whole trove of opinions, orders, and shouted comments built up to discuss over the next few weeks.

One of the first that caught my eye was an order from Judge Burke that contained that rarest of gems -- praise for a party to a discovery dispute -- and included a neat primer on what the Court likes to see when ruling on them.

I don't know why, but whenever you ask it to include text it always sort of converts it into a realistic seeming eastern european language
I don't know why, but whenever you ask it to include text it always sort of converts it into a realistic seeming eastern european language AI-Generated, displayed with permission

The dispute in question was pretty standard stuff, with the defendant wanting a supplemental protective order that gave extra protections to design files that it likened to source code. As the party seeking the stricter protective order, they bore the burden which the Court found they met easily:

Defendant did here what too few parties in discovery disputes do: it made a detailed factual record, supported by multiple sworn declarations, that strongly supported its arguments. That is, Defendant has demonstrated that the "highly technical details necessary to fabricate [its] proprietary... lens designs" are, "in effect, the source code of lenses" and "are as commercially sensitive as any other form of source code[,]" such that they should receive the heightened form of protection set out in the SPO.

ImmerVision, Inc. v. Apple Inc., C.A. No 21-1484, D.I. 136 (D. Del. Aug. 4, 2023) (Oral Order).

The "detailed factual record" here was more straightforward [read: achievable] than you might think. The defendant submitted 2 declarations: a 3-pager from ...