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Joseph Mellema Joins Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP as Of Counsel in the Patent Litigation Group

Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP is pleased to announce that Joseph J. Mellema has joined the Firm as Of Counsel in the Patent Litigation Group. Mellema will be resident in the Firm’s Orange County office. Mellema focuses on the protection and enforcement of all intellectual property rights, including patents,…

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District Court Concludes that Plaintiff Is Collaterally Estopped from Asserting Two Related Patents After Court in Another Jurisdiction Found one of the Patents Invalid under Alice

In this patent infringement action, the Defendant moved for dismissal based on collateral estoppel and Alice contending that a prior district court had found the patents invalid for lack of patentable subject matter. Before applying the two-step Alice test, the district court took “judicial notice of the fact that Patent…

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District Court Denies Motion for Preliminary Injunction Where Inter Partes Review (“IPR”) Pending on Claims from Different Patent But Similar to Patent-In-Suit

In earlier patent infringement litigation, the Plaintiff sued Ancestry.com DNA, LLC (“Ancestry”) in the District of Delaware (“Delaware litigation”) alleging infringement of U.S. Patent Number 8,221,381 (the “‘381 patent”). Ancestry subsequently filed an IPR seeking review of several claims of the ‘381 patent, and the PTAB issued an institution decision…

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District Court Refuses to Amend Protective Order to Permit Expert, Who Was Former Employee of Competitor, to Review Confidential Documents

In this patent infringement action, the defendant, High 5 Games (“High 5”), moved for an order overruling the plaintiff’s, Konami Gaming, Inc. (“Konami”), objection to an expert witness viewing confidential information. In the alternative, High 5 moved to amend the stipulated protective order signed by the parties. As explained by…

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CG Technology v. DraftKings District Court Stays Discovery Pending Motion to Dismiss Challenging Validity of Asserted Patents Under Alice

DraftKings filed a motion to stay discovery until the district court had an opportunity to rule on the a motion to dismiss. The motion to dismiss asserted that all of the ten patents-in-suit were invalid because they claimed patent-ineligible subject matter. CG Technology opposed the motion. The district court began…

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Oracle v. Google: Violation of Protective Order to Disclose Confidential Information in Open Court

In this long standing litigation between Oracle and Google, a dispute arose over the protective order and whether the disclosure of certain information violated the terms of the protective order when it was disclosed in open court. The district court explained that “[b]y long tradition, when a lawyer wishes to…

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District Court Holds that Document Retention and Destruction Policies Are Privileged under Court’s Default Discovery Standard

In this patent infringement action, the plaintiff sought production of the defendant’s document retention and document destruction policies. The defendant asserted that the request sought information protected by work product and attorney-client privilege. The plaintiff argued that the documents were merely corporate policies that could not be privileged. The district…

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District Court Declines to Vacate Ruling That Patent Is Invalid for Covering Unpatentable Abstract Ideas after the Parties Settled the Case with an Appeal to the Federal Circuit Pending

The Plaintiffs filed a patent infringement action against the defendant, Netskope, accusing Netskope of infringing U.S. Patent Number 7,305,707 (the “707 Patent”). Netskope filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings, which the district court granted finding that the asserted claims for the 707 Patent were unpatentable abstract ideas. The…

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Plaintiff Granted Dismissal Based on Covenant Not to Sue Even With Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Patentable Subject Matter Pending

The plaintiff, Shipping and Transit, LLC (“Plaintiff”), filed a patent infringement action against Defendant Neptune Cigars, Inc. (“Defendant”), for infringement of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,415,207 (“the ‘207 Patent”) and 6,763,299 (“the ‘299 Patent”). The Defendant filed a motion to dismiss on the ground that the patents are directed to ineligible…

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District Court Excludes Damage Expert’s Opinion Based On Faulty Royalty Calculation

In this patent infringement action between Finjan and Sophos, the district court had previously granted a motion to exclude Finjan’s damage expert. The district court explained that the expert’s, Layne-Farrar, “method of applying a royalty rate to an apportioned base for each patent and adding the resulting royalties was not…

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