A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


DED
United States District Court for the District of Delaware

Substantial Completion Is Really More of a State of Mind

Nathan R. Hoeschen, Oct. 8, 2020
Substantial Completion Sanctions

Typical small production of recent unimportant documents served after substantial completion deadline
Typical small production of recent unimportant documents served after substantial completion deadline Can you find the book you need?, Carles Rabada, Unsplash

"Substantial completion of document production" is not exactly a bright line.

Is it more than half?

More than 90%?

At least in Delaware, cases interpreting the issue are light on the ground. Usually, when presented with a steaming pile of documents after the substantial completion deadline, the parties will work out some modest schedule extension without any court intervention. This is probably for the best, but it means that the parties are usually working from a blank slate when negotiating the necessity and length of any extension.

Luckily for us, Judge Burke issued an Oral Order …

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District of Delaware Announces Socially-Distanced Jury Restart Guidelines, Jury Trial Procedures

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 7, 2020
COVID-19

COVID-19
CDC / Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAMS

The Court emphasized that these are just guidelines, not law, and may still be objected to. Here are some highlights:

Jury Selection

  • Various screening measures and a mask requirement
  • Potential jurors will be split into groups of 25, with no more than two groups in the courthouse at a time

Deliberations

  • Deliberations (and breaks) will be in the adjacent courtroom, with windows papered over and microphones disabled, rather than the usual jury room
  • No mask requirement in the adjacent courtroom if jurors are 6 feet apart
  • Jurors will get a computer with exhibits and a projector; one juror will operate

Courtroom Procedures

  • All individuals generally wear masks
  • Counsel "speaking from a socially-distanced …
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Court Instantly Rejects Unopposed Motion to Redact That Lacked Supporting Declaration

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 6, 2020
Sealing Redactions

Always a bit terrifying:

The [unopposed] motion to redact (see C.A. 19-311-RGA D.I. 96) is DENIED. The redactions are extensive, and the request to redact is unsupported by any statement under oath. I do not think the motion meets the requirements of Avandia Marketing. Ordered by Judge Richard G. Andrews on 10/2/2020.

Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. v. Anchen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 19-311-RGA, D.I. 97 (D. Del. Oct. 2, 2020).

If you want your motion to redact to succeed these days, you really need to keep the redactions narrow, and it's safest to offer ample support.

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Judge Andrews Declines Request to Move January Trial Due to Coronavirus

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 6, 2020
COVID-19

In M2M Solutions LLC, et al. v. Sierra Wireless Am. Inc., C.A. No. 14-1102-RGA (D. Del.), the parties submitted a joint letter last week asking Judge Andrews to delay their December 2020 PTC and January 2021 jury trial until "spring 2021" due to COVID-19.

Judge Andrews quickly declined, via an oral order issued on the same day:

[T]he Court is not now inclined to continue the trial to spring 2021. Circumstances could change for the better; travel restrictions could be lifted. And the pretrial conference, at least, can be done remotely. The parties may submit a letter after Thanksgiving revisiting the issue in light of then−existing circumstances.
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Court Permits Deposition Questions on Litigation Financing Arrangements

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 5, 2020
Depositions MTC

I thought this was interesting. Last week Judge Burke granted a motion to compel a plaintiff's witness to respond on questions about the plaintiff's litigation financing arrangements.

Apparently plaintiff's attorneys instructed the witness not to answer at the deposition, but in the discovery dispute they only argued that the information is irrelevant, and did not raise privilege. Since relevance is not a valid justification for an instruction not to answer under FRCP 30, the Court permitted defendant to re-ask the question and held that plaintiff's witness must answer.

About Those Redacted Versions

I say plaintiff "apparently" objected only on reasonableness grounds because plaintiff never filed the redacted version of its sealed letter brief—a common problem.

If parties continue …

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Judge Noreika Awards Fees and Fees-on-Fees

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 2, 2020
Final Judgment FRCP 54

About 204,261 of these.
About 204,261 of these. Sharon McCutcheon, Unsplash

Judge Noreika today awarded $204,261.31 in attorneys’ fees to a plaintiff in a trademark action, after the defendants fired their counsel, failed to obtain new counsel, and eventually had a default judgment entered against them.

She also awarded fees-on-fees, granting attorney fees for bringing the successful fees motion but not for a previous unsuccessful fees motion.

The previous motion was denied due to timing issues. Plaintiffs had filed it more than 14 days after the default judgment, and Judge Thynge issued an R&R holding that the 14-day fees deadline under FRCP 54 had passed.

Judge Noreika then offered the plaintiffs a second chance to file the fees motion. She ultimately disagreed …

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Additional Sanctions In My Favorite Delaware Case

Nathan R. Hoeschen, Oct. 1, 2020
Sanctions

The Court (top center, riding an eagle) ordering additional sanctions
The Court (top center, riding an eagle) ordering additional sanctions Jupiter Fighting the Giants, Jacopo Zucchi

Following on Yesterday's post where we noted the odd and pleasing use of "Kludgy," I would like to use today's post to bring attention to another recent Delaware opinion which contains what I can only assume is the only use of the phrase "[y]ou can work with legal but at the end you will have your face burried [sic, obviously] in s***!" in a legal opinion.

The case is Citrix Systems, Inc. v. Workspot, Inc., C.A. No. 18-588, D.I. 411 (D. Del. Sept. 25, 2020), and it is a true ray of light in these dark days.

The opinion describes …

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We've Found the Bottom: A Claim Construction So Unsupportable that It Fails the Rule 12 Plausibility Standard

Andrew E. Russell, Sept. 30, 2020
MTD § 101

The most famous use of the phrase
The most famous use of the phrase "self-evident"? Engraving by William J. Stone

In ruling on § 101 motions to dismiss, the Court typically adopts plaintiff's constructions outright, if plaintiff offers any. Those constructions may or may not be enough to avoid dismissal, but I can't recall any instance where the District of Delaware actually had to reject a construction as implausible under the FRCP 12(b)(6) standard.

Until now. In Synkloud Tech. v. HP, Inc., C.A. No. 19-1360-RGA (D. Del. Sep. 28, 2020), plaintiff tried to bake the § 101 "non-conventional" standard into the proposed claim construction. Clever! But Judge Andrews described the problems with that approach as "self-evident":

Plaintiff states that a person of ordinary skill …
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Judge Andrews Counts References

Nathan R. Hoeschen, Sept. 25, 2020
Claim Narrowing

Clerks frantically tallying prior art references and combinations
Clerks frantically tallying prior art references and combinations Brown Abaca, Crissy Jarvis, Unsplash

This blog could be nothing but disputes about claim narrowing. We'd have 72,000 posts a year and we'd never get to the bottom of all the little sub-disputes, and how each judge prefers to handle them. I'm sure it would be quite popular.

This week in IPA Technologies Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., Judge Andrews clarified his position on one of the more common disputes -- how exactly to count "references" for the purposes of narrowing.

The defendant, Amazon, had been ordered to reduce the number of references in its invalidity contentions and had responded by limiting itself to 4 prior art "systems." …

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