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…
Patent Lawyer Blog
Motion to Sever and Stay Denied Where Customer Defendants Could Not Satisfy Customer Suit Exception Factors
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…
After Finding of Direct Infringement on Summary Judgment, Court Concludes that Defendant’s Infringement Was Not Willful But Denies Defenses of Laches and Equitable Estoppel
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…
Will Mayo v. Prometheus Be the Basis for the Invalidation of Broad Patent Claims and the Renegotiation of Royalties? Implications for Myriad gene case.
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…
Common Legal Interest Doctrine Saves Privileged Documents from Production Where Parties Contemplated an Acquisition of Patents
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 v. Vertical Computer Systems: Motion to Stay Pending Reexamination Denied Where Alleged Infringer Filed Declaratory Judgment Action to Initiate Litigation and Then Participated in Litigation Through the Markman Hearing
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.…
Apple Invalidates Two Claims of NetAirus’ Patent But Faces Trial on Two Others: NetAirus v. Apple
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…
Request for Sanctions for Spoliation Denied Where Plaintiff Failed to Bring the Spoliation Issue to the Court’s Attention for Four Months and Waited Until the Eve of Trial
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…
Robocast v. Apple/Microsoft: Transfer Motion Denied Where Plaintiff’s Choice of Forum Was Given Deference and the Relative Size and Strength of the Parties Weighed Against Transfer
In two separate actions, Robocast sued Apple and Microsoft for patent infringement. Apple responded by filing a motion to transfer and Microsoft subsequently filed a similar motion to transfer. Both complaints are centered on U.S. Patent No. 7,155,451 (the “‘451 Patent”), which is directed toward an “Automated Browsing System for…
Tactical Decision to Exclude Royalty Rate from Expert Report Causes Court to Preclude Defendant from Arguing Royalty Rate to the Jury
In this patent infringement action, the defendant, Varian Medical Systems, provided an expert report on damages that did not state a royalty rate for the accused products. The district court termed this a tactical decision. “By the way of background, Defendant Varian made the tactical decision to have its expert…