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Two weeks earlier, the court excluded the expert opinion and testimony of Plaintiff Golden Bridge Technology’s (“GBT”) damages expert. Nonetheless, the court gave GBT one week to submit a new report based on a new theory. After GBT met its deadline, Apple moved to exclude the second report as well.

As explained by the court, “Apple’s motion points out several of the significant flaws in Schulze’s current report: (1) Schulze improperly and sub silencio allocated the entire value of Apple’s portfolio licenses with Ericsson and Nokia to a tiny subset of a subset of a subset of a subset of the patents and standards in those portfolios; (2) Schulze improperly tripled the per-unit rate that Apple would have paid to GBT based on purely academic articles; (3) Schulze improperly failed to compare the patent-in-suit’s technical merits to those of other standards essential patents and (4) Schulze improperly failed to allocate any value to the non-license terms of the Ericsson and Nokia agreements.”
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Echostar Satellite L.L.C. (“Echostar”) moved to compel the production of settlement agreements from the plaintiff. Several issues arose on the motion, including whether the Magistrate Judge had jurisdiction to grant the motion even though the discovery cutoff date had passed, whether a party has an obligation to supplement its prior production with documents that were not created until after the discovery cutoff, and whether the settlement agreements were responsive to the prior document requests.

Turning to the first issue, the court found that it had jurisdiction because of an extension due to a mediation date. “Ordinarily, any motion concerning discovery must be filed sufficiently in advances of the discovery cutoff to allow any production to be completed prior to the cutoff date. Here, however, the parties had obtained an extension of the mediation date from the District Judge in order to allow the instant motion to be decided before the mediation. The Court concludes that, given the foregoing, it has jurisdiction to entertain the instant motion.”
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In this patent infringement action, a dispute arose over whether the defendant B/E Aerospace could rely on declarations from one or more of the inventors of the asserted patent in support of its claim construction position. As explained by the district court, “[i]n the Joint Claim Construction Statement (“Joint Statement,” ECF No. 45) filed on May 9, 2014, Plaintiff MAG Aerospace Industries, Inc. (“Plaintiff”) and Defendant B/E Aerospace, Inc. (“Defendant”) dispute whether, in its claim construction briefing, Defendant may rely on declaration evidence from one or more of the individuals named as inventors on U.S. Patent Nos. 6,353,942; 6,536,054; and 6,536,055 (the “Asserted Patents”).
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In these patent infringement actions, the defendants moved to transfer to three different district courts. As explained by the district court, “[t]here are currently six pending actions in the District of Delaware involving LifePort, LifeScreen, or both. All of the infringement cases involve technology pertaining to the field of minimally invasive vascular repair and many of the actions share overlapping patents-in-suit, which will require claim construction. LifePort has asserted the most patents against the defendant W.L Gore & Associates, Inc. (“Gore”), which must be litigated in this district because Gore is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Newark, Delaware. Five of the patents asserted against Gore overlap with the defendant Endologix, Inc. (“Endologix”). LifePort has also asserted another patent against Gore that overlaps with the defendants Medtronic, Inc. and Medtronic Vascular, Inc. (collectively, “Medtronic”). Similarly, LifeScreen has asserted a patent against C.R. Bard, Inc. and Bard Peripheral Vascular, Inc. (collectively, “Bard”), and Cook Incorporated and Cook Medical Incorporated (collectively, “Cook”), but Bard has not sought transfer.”
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After the district court issued a Markman ruling, the parties informed the court that they had reached an agreement in principle to settle the action. The plaintiff, FlatWorld, then moved to vacate the claim construction order. The district court noted that it had only adopted FlatWorld’s proposed construction for one out of nine terms. “Now plaintiff FlatWorld Interactives LLC wants me to vacate the claim construction order, in which I adopted only one of its proposed constructions out of nine terms to be construed, because it is concerned about the potential collateral estoppel effects of my order in two actions pending before the United States District Court for the District of Delaware.”

The district court then explained that Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60 provides that a court may relieve a party from an order if “applying it prospectively is no longer equitable” or for “any [ ] reason that justifies relief.” FED. R. CIV. P. 60(b). “Although the Court may vacate an order upon settlement there is no requirement to do so; otherwise any litigant dissatisfied with a trial court’s findings would be able to have them wiped from the books.” White v. Shen, No. 09-cv-989-BZ, 2011 WL 2790475, at *1 (N.D. Cal. July 13, 2011) (internal quotation marks omitted). A “district court can decide whether to vacate its judgment in light of ‘the consequences and attendant hardships of dismissal or refusal to dismiss’ and ‘the competing values of finality of judgment and right to relitigation of unreviewed disputes.'” Dilley v. Gunn, 64 F.3d 1365, 1371 (9th Cir. 1995).
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Plaintiff Trading Technologies International, Inc. (“TT”) moved to strike the invalidity expert report of the defendant, CQG. TT made two arguments its motion: “(1) that Dr. Mellor failed to conduct a proper written description analysis because, according to TT, he incorrectly focuses on features that are not recited in the claims and concludes that there is no written description to support the unclaimed features; and (2) that Dr. Mellor failed to consider the perspective of one of ordinary skill in the art in his written description analysis.”

CQG responded that TT mischaracterized Dr. Mellor’s opinions and that Dr. Mellor correctly applied the written description test to determine whether a person of ordinary skill in the art would understand whether the inventors were in possession of TT’s asserted Static Limitation. CQG further asserted that TT misrepresented Dr. Mellor’s explanation of a person of ordinary skill in the art and offered no explanation why the district court should adopt TT’s definition.
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Plaintiffs Versata Software, Inc. and Versata Development Group, Inc. (collectively, “Versata”) filed a patent infringement action in July 2012 against defendant Callidus Software, Inc. (“Callidus”) The patents were all characterized as “covered business method patents.”

Callidus filed a challenged to the validity of the patents-in-suit in August 2013, pursuant to the “covered business method” (“CBM”) patent review process provided for under the America Invents Act. As explained by the district court, “[t]he CBM petitions were filed by Callidus some 13 months after suit was filed and after Callidus had instituted a motion practice which included motions to dismiss and/or transfer. On March 4, 2014, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) granted review of the patents-in-suit, finding it more likely than not that the challenged claims are directed to non-statutory subject matter and, therefore, unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 101.”
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In this patent infringement action between Golden Bridge Technology, Inc. (“Golden Bridge or GBT”) against Apple, Golden Bridge’s counsel moved to withdraw as counsel of record because Golden Bridge had failed to pay the legal bills. As explained by the court, “[s]ince this case appeared on the undersigned’s docket, Plaintiff Golden Bridge Technology Inc. has been represented by attorneys from the McKool Smith firm. With GBT’s consent, McKool now seeks to withdraw as GBT counsel based on the client’s failure to pay its bills.”

Although the court was sympathetic to the plight of the attorneys, it did not believe that granting the request to withdraw was appropriate. “This court is quite sympathetic to the idea that attorneys ordinarily should not be made to work for free. But here two key factors weigh against granting McKool’s withdrawal request. First, no other attorneys have appeared for GBT. Even in the time since McKool filed its motion, no new attorneys have appeared. Second, trial is upon us. Jury selection is May 30, and opening statements are set for the following Monday. All pretrial motions have been briefed, and the parties are set to appear for a final pretrial conference this Friday.”
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HTC Corporation and HTC America, Inc. (“HTC”) moved for a finding that this patent infringement action is “exceptional” under the Patent Act’s fee-shifting provision which authorizes the award of attorney fees and costs to prevailing parties in “exceptional cases.” 35 U.S.C. § 285.

The district court had previously found that the patents in suit were unenforceable due to inequitable conduct before the patent office. Intellect Wireless, Inc., v. HTC Corp., 910 F. Supp. 2d 1056 (N.D. Ill. 2012), aff’d, 732 F.3d 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2013). The prior rulings establish prima facie support for a finding of an exceptional case. See Forest Labs., Inc. v. Abbott Labs., 339 F.3d 1324, 1329 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (quoting Brasseler, U.S.A. I, L.P. v. Stryker Sales Corp., 267 F.3d 1370, 1380 (Fed. Cir. 2001)). As a result, the district court had granted HTC’s request for additional limited document discovery was granted.
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In this patent infringement action, the district court concluded that the parties were over-litigating the case and matters were only getting worse as trial got closer. “The Court’s previously stated concern that the parties are over-litigating this case is growing. 18 motions in limine were filed, and 15 were denied. A few days before trial, an ex parte motion was filed concerning discovery. After agreeing long ago at the Scheduling Conference that the trial should last 8 days, the parties recently asked for a much longer trial or trials, even though the case has been greatly simplified through motion practice. The number of documents on the docket in this case is approaching 350. The parties’ continual expansion of the remaining issues in dispute retroactively waste the substantial resources the Court has committed to resolving the multitude of disputes the parties have presented.”

The district court also expressed concern that the parties were not simplifying the issues for the jury. “Rather than viewing billions and billions of stars, they need to be told about the constellations that unify and simplify. This is not happening in this case, and the Court believes effectiveness in front of the jury will thus be diminished. This case is being over-litigated, particularly considering the amount involved.”
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