As a preliminary matter, Judge Posner consolidated the six patent cases that were filed by Brandeis University against various defendants, finding that they involve a number of common issues of law and that judicial efficiency would be maximized by consolidation. “These six cases are hereby consolidated under 1:12-cv-01508, pursuant to…
In the ongoing struggle between Apple and Motorola over claims of patent infringement in just one of many battles that is taking place across the country over smart phones, both parties proposed claim constructions that were not particularly well-written for lay jurors. After reviewing the claim construction briefs and stating…
The district court had previously stricken certain parts of Oracle’s damage expert report on two separate occasions. First, the district court struck Oracle’s expert report for failing to apportion the value of the asserted claims and instead using the total value of Java and Android in calculating damages. Second, the…
Cambrian Science (“Cambrian”) filed a second amended complaint that alleged patent infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,777,312 (the “‘312 Patent”). The second amended complaint alleged infringement against several defendants, certain of which were labeled by the district court as “Customer Defendants.” As to the Customer Defendants, Cambrian asserted that they…
On summary judgment, the district court determined that the defendants directly infringed all patents at issue in the lawsuit. The district court subsequently conduct a bench trial on issues of willfulness and on defendants’ equitable defenses, particularly whether the defenses of laches and equitable estoppel provided a defense to the…
In Mayo v. Prometheus, the U.S. Supreme Court held that claims directed to a diagnostic method were unpatentable, not simply because the subject matter of the claims was not novel or obvious, but rather because the subject matter covered by the claims was the mere application of the laws of…
Plaintiff moved to compel the production of documents that were listed on the defendants’ privilege logs. The district court explained the disputed documents as follows: “The disputed documents at issue were either authored by Ablation Frontiers, Inc.’s (“AFI”) outside counsel for AFI, or Medtronic’s outside counsel for Medtronic. The documents…
Interwoven moved to stay all proceedings pending the outcome of an ex parte reexamination of the two patents-in-suit. Interwoven asserted that a stay was warranted because the defendant appeared unprepared to litigate and a reexamination would likely modify the issues in the case, with no undue burden to the defendant.…
Plaintiff NetAirus Technologies (“NetAirus”) contended that Apple was infringing U.S. Patent No, 7,103,380 (the “‘380 Patent”), which pertains to a method in which a handset device communicates wirelessly over both local area networks and wide area networks. NetAirus claimed that the iPhone 3G and later models infringed the ‘380 Patent…
Plaintiff Schering Corp. (“Schering”) filed a patent infringement action against Apotex Inc. (“Apotex”). Schering brought a motion contending that Apotex spoliated relevant evidence. The motion was based on the omission of allegedly relevant evidence from Apotex’ expert report. The expert report was served in October 2011 and Schering notified Apotex…