Articles Posted in E.D. Texas

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In a case from the Eastern District of Texas, the district court granted an emergency motion to compel pertaining to source code contained on a stand-alone computer. In the case, Hyundai had loaded its source code on a stand-alone computer and provided a standard text-editor (Notepad), a source code editor (Notepad ++) and a comparison tool (Beyond Compare) to facilitate plaintiff’s review of the source code. The plaintiff found that this was insufficient and requested that Hyundai provide integrated development environments to facilitate the review, arguing that the integrated development environment was required to mimic the operation of the source code. Hyundai refused and the emergency motion was filed.

In filing its emergency motion to compel, the plaintiff argued that because of the modular nature of the source code, the integrated development environments would allow its experts to follow various jumps between modules contained in separate files, which would replicate the behavior of the source code during execution. The plaintiff noted that the tools it wanted installed are free and the installation is “virtually effortless.”
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On March 31, 2011, the United District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Judge Ward) entered a judgment against Johnson & Johnson and Cordis Corporation in the amount of $583 million. The judgment stems from a patent infringement action filed by Bruce Saffran, M.D., Ph.D. against Johnson & Johnson and Cordis over drug eluting stents (this is not the first time Dr. Saffran has won a large patent case against a medical device maker for drug eluting stents as he previously prevailed on a case against Boston Scientific for over $400 million which has since settled).

In upholding the jury verdict, the Court found that, based on the Court’s earlier claim construction (which the Court declined to reconsider), there was sufficient evidence to support the jury verdict of patent infringement. In reaching this conclusion, the Court noted the testimony of plaintiff’s expert and found that a reasonable jury could have relied on the testimony of plaintiff’s expert and that was sufficient to support the finding of infringement.

The Court also rejected defendants’ challenge to the validity of the patent and also noted that the parties had stipulated to use a preponderance of the evidence standard for prior art that was not before the patent office in light of the i4i v. Microsoft case that is currently pending before the United States Supreme Court. Such a strategic decision by the plaintiff eliminate a potential ground for reversal of this award in the event that the United States Supreme Court changes the burden of proof for validity challenges.

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On April 4, 2011, the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas set aside a jury verdict of $625 million in favor of Mirror Worlds and against Apple, Inc. Mirror Worlds, LLC v. Apple, Inc., Case No. 6-08-CV-88 (E.D. Tex. April 4, 2011) (Judge Davis). The Court set aside the jury’s finding of infringement because Mirror Worlds failed to prove that Apple directly infringed Mirror Worlds’ patents because Mirror Worlds did not present evidence that Apple performed the steps detailed in the method claims.

The Court found that it was insufficient to show that Apple sold software that could perform the steps; rather, the Court held that Mirror Worlds needed to prove through appropriate evidence that Apple performed each and every step of the method claimed in the patent, i.e., that Apple itself used the methods claimed in the patent. As Mirror Worlds failed to proceed on that theory–and relied instead on mere sales of software–there was not sufficient evidence to support the jury verdict.

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