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In an effort to encourage more participation from less experienced attorneys, the District of Massachusetts has several judges adopting standing orders that strongly encourage the participation of relatively inexperienced attorneys. Judge Casper is the most recent judge in the District of Massachusetts to adopt such a standing order.

Judge Casper explained the reason for the standing order: “The decline in courtroom opportunities for newer lawyers is widely recognized and is one of concern to both the bench and bar. A Task Force of the Boston Bar Association acknowledged this much in its report, “Jury Trial Trends in Massachusetts: The Need to Ensure Jury Trial Competency Among Practicing Attorneys as a Result of the Vanishing Jury Trial Phenomenon, issued in 2006. As a result of its year-long work exploring the statistical and anecdotal evidence regarding the rate of jury trials over time, the Task Force concluded that ‘the vanishing jury trial is actually affecting the jury trial experience of current and future generations of practitioners and made recommendations to courts, lawyers and clients to remedy this issue. Among its recommendations to the judiciary, the Task Force called upon ‘judges presiding over pre-trial conferences and related matters to identify and encourage opportunities for a junior attorney to participate in the examination of witnesses and other significant trial work.’
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Plaintiff TiVo brought an emergency motion to compel production of an e-mail that defendant AT&T produced and then clawed back pursuant to a protective order agreed to by the parties. During a deposition, TiVo marked an e-mail as an exhibit and questioned the deponent for several minutes about the e-mail before AT&T’s counsel demanded that TiVo return the e-mail. AT&T’s counsel explained that the e-mail may be subject to a common interest agreement with a third party. TiVo returned the e-mail pursuant to the parties’ protective order.

TiVo subsequently moved to compel the e-mail arguing that it did not contain attorney-client privileged or work product information. TiVo pointed out that neither the sender nor the recipient are attorneys and the subject matter of the email did not contain legal advice. In addition, the e-mail was created for a business purpose and not for purposes of litigation and therefore could not be work product. TiVo also argued that the e-mail was discoverable under the crime-fraud exception because the contents of the e-mail constitute prima facie evidence of an antitrust violation.
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The district court issued a stay pending reexamination of an inter partes reexamination of the patent at issue in the litigation. Plaintiff filed a motion to lift the district court’s stay pending re-examination based on the argument that the reexamination was nearly complete because an office action had issued invalidating many of the claims, but not all of them.

Defendants responded by asserting that the reexamination process was not yet complete and that either party to the reexamination could appeal a recent office action that had issued. In addition, one of the defendants to the action informed the court that it would appeal the office action that had issued from the PTO.
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The parties filed cross-motions for summary on the issue of inequitable conduct. The district court had previously denied summary judgment motions on the issue of inequitable conduct but that was prior to the Federal Circuit’s decision in Therasense, Inc. v. Becton Dickinson and Co., 649 F.3d 1276 (Fed. Circ. 2011) (en banc). The district court granted the parties request to re-brief the issue in light of Therasense.

The plaintiff asserted on its renewed summary judgment motion that there was insufficient evidence of specific intent to deceive the Patent and Trademark Office (“PTO”). The defendant did not dispute that there was no direct evidence of specific intent in the case. Instead, the defendant relied on circumstantial evidence, arguing that the only logical inference from the evidence is one of intent to deceive the PTO. To make this argument, the defendant relied on the fact that two of the inventors knew of two significant references and failed to disclose them to the PTO. The district court noted, relying on Therasense, that “[p]roving that the applicant knew of a reference, should have known of its materiality, and decided not to submit it to the PTO does not prove specific intent to deceive.” 649 F.3d at 1290. Based on this quote from Therasense, the district court concluded that the mere fact that the inventors failed to disclose these references was insufficient to defeat summary judgment in favor of the plaintiff.
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Defendants in two Eastern District of Texas actions moved to centralize their cases in the District of Delaware or in another transferee forum. Three actions involving the same plaintiff and patent were already pending in the District of Delaware. Two of the defendants in the Delaware actions supported the motion to transfer and centralize, while the other defendants in the Delaware actions did not oppose the motion. The patent holder opposed centralization and, alternatively, suggested selecting the Eastern District of Texas as the transferee forum.

The panel found that the five actions involved common questions of fact and that centralization would serve the convenience of the parties and witness and promote the just and efficient conduct of the litigation. To support this conclusion, the panel noted that all five actions involve factual question regarding the infringement and/or validity of a single patent that relates to basic web presentation technologies, such as “previews” that pop up when a mouse rolls over certain site features. The panel found that “[c]entralization will eliminate duplicative discovery, prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings (particularly on claim construction issues), and conserve the resources of the parties, their counsel and the judiciary.”
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Defendant was the sole named inventor of the patent in suit. Plaintiff brought a claim for inventorship, alleging that he was the co-inventor of the patent. The parties cross moved for summary judgment and for sanctions.

The defendant and plaintiff maintained a business relationship for approximately 15 years, with plaintiff agreeing to pay the defendant $5000 in consulting fees in connection with the plaintiff’s idea for a video product to be used in automobile marketing. Defendant would act as a consultant and advise the plaintiff how to build the system. Defendant in fact designed the system, hired one or more computer programmers and had the system built.
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Plaintiffs asserted patents relating to computer-based messaging products and services against numerous defendants, including Facebook, LinkedIn, E*Trade and Verizon in two different district courts. The patents at issue named Charles Bobo as an inventor and one of the earlier patents in the Bobo family of patents was asserted in six of the actions pending in the Central District of California. Five later-issued patents in the Bobo family were asserted in actions in the Eastern District of Texas.

The panel considered whether centralization in one district would serve the convenience of the parties and witnesses or further the just and efficient conduct of the litigation. Many of the defendants supported centralization, while Verizon opposed centralization. The plaintiffs opposed the motion to centralize the cases.
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Pinpoint filed a patent infringement action in the Northern District of Illinois against L.L. Bean, Orbitz, Groupon and Hotwire for allegedly infringing three patents pertaining to accessing data using customer profiles. L.L. Bean filed a motion to sever and transfer to the District of Maine. The district court granted the motion and transferred the case against L.L. Bean to Maine.

The first step in the district court’s analysis was to analyze whether L.L. was misjoined in the action. Focusing on Fed.R.Civ.P. 20(a)(2), and in particular the requirement that “any right to relief is asserted against [the defendants] jointly, severally, or in the alternative with respect to or arising out of the same transaction, occurrence, or series of transactions or occurrences,” the district court found that joinder was not proper. “As L.L. Bean points out, defendants are unrelated companies that have nothing in common except Pinpoint’s allegation that they have infringed the same three patents.” Referring to Pinpoint’s response as “lame,” the district court found that the argument that all of the accused products are extremely similar to be insufficient to satisfy the first prong of Fed.R.Civ.P. 20(a)(2). “The defendants’ operations of unrelated websites does not establish a common transaction or occurrence.
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Plaintiff filed a declaratory judgment action of non-infringement after it received a letter from IP Navigation Group (“IP Nav”). The letter invited the plaintiff to engage in a licensing discussion regarding the patent or patent of IP Nav’s client, which remained anonymous. After filing the declaratory judgment, the plaintiff sought and was granted permission by the district court to serve a subpoena on IP asking IP Nav to identify the anonymous patent holder along with the patent numbers for the patents referenced in the letter.

IP Nav then filed a motion to quash the subpoena in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, arguing that the subpoena was invalid for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The district court in Texas issued an order finding that IP Nav had raised “substantial questions” regarding the district court’s jurisdiction but determined it was appropriate for the district court in Wisconsin where the action was pending to determine that issue.
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The plaintiff filed multiple patent infringement actions against seven different defendants in many different district courts. The plaintiff moved to centralize the patent litigation in the Eastern District of Texas where there were seven actions pending in five separate districts. The responding defendants all opposed centralization. Based on the briefing before the panel and after a hearing, the panel held that the actions involved common questions of fact and that centralization of the actions would serve the convenience of the parties and witnesses. The panel also found that centralization would promote the just and efficient conduct of the litigation. However, the panel determined that centralization was more appropriate in the Western District of Oklahoma (where one case was pending) rather than the Eastern District of Texas (where three cases were pending).

All seven actions concerned questions regarding the infringement and/or the invalidity of three patents pertaining to “smart meters” that are used to measure energy consumption and to collect those measurements over a wireless communication network. In each action, the plaintiff alleged that the defendant, each of whom are utility companies, use infringing meters covered by the patents. As a result, the panel determined that “[c]entralization will eliminate duplicative discovery, prevent inconsistent pretrial rulings (particularly on claim construction issues), and conserve the resources of the parties, their counsel and the judiciary.”
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