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Reflectix, Inc., Innovative Insulation, Inc., TVM Building Products, Inc., Energy Efficient Solutions, LLC, and Home Depot U.S.A., Inc.’s (collectively, “Defendants”) filed a motion to stay pending and Inter Partes Review (“IPR”) that was filed with the Patent Trials and Appeals Board (“PTAB”). The plaintiff opposed the motion to stay on the grounds that the IPR had not yet been granted for review by the PTAB.

In analyzing the motion to say, the district court noted that “it has the inherent power to control its own docket, including the power to stay proceedings. See Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 706 (1997) (‘The District Court has broad discretion to stay proceedings as an incident to its power to control its own docket.’). How to best manage the court’s docket ‘calls for the exercise of judgment, which must weigh competing interests and maintain an even balance.’ Landis v. N. Am. Co., 299 U.S. 248, 254-55 (1936).”
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In this patent infringement action, the defendant filed a motion to strike the “errata sheets” to deposition testimony of two of plaintiffs’ expert witnesses, Neill Luebke and Robert Sinclair. The plaintiff opposed the motion to strike.

As explained by the district court, “[t]here is an old joke that only lawyers and house painters can change black to white, and vise versa. In a sense, that is the situation this motion presents. Defendant complains that the plaintiffs’ witnesses Luebke and Sinclair submitted errata sheets regarding their respective depositions which starkly changed the substance of their testimonies. For example, in several instances, Sinclair changed his deposition answer from ‘no’ to ‘yes.’ In other places, a somewhat tenuous answer of, ‘I believe not,’ was changed to a dogmatic and emphatic ‘yes.’ Similarly, Luebke changed, ‘I don’t believe so,’ to ‘yes,’ and ‘At the present time, I have not,’ to ‘Yes.’ And there are other examples.”
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In an IPR petition filed by petitioner Shire Development LLC, the petitioner sought review of patent owner, LCS Group, LLC’s U.S. Patent No. 8,318,813. In its mandatory statement, the patent owner timely designated outside counsel to represent it in the IPR proceeding. Subsequently, the designated counsel for the patent owner sought authorization to withdraw from representation. According to the patent owner’s counsel, the inventor desired to represent himself in the proceeding.

The Board denied the request of the patent owner’s counsel on the grounds that the patent-at-issue is assigned to a juristic entity, i.e., a legal entity that is not a natural person, LCS Group, LLC, which also is designated as the real party-in-interest. Under 37 C.F.R. § 1.31 (2012), because the real party-in-interest in this proceeding is a corporation, a juristic entity, it can only appear through counsel.
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After a jury trial in which TransPerfect was awarded damages, TransPerfect moved for an award of supplemental damages under 35 U.S.C. § 284 on the theory that the jury did not award it damages for infringement that occurred after December 31, 2011. TransPerfect contended that the jury’s damage award of $1,006,002 failed to account for its post-2011 damages because the defendant, MotionPoint, failed to produce any financial records later than 2011.

TransPerfect contended that the parties’ experts were therefore unable to examine any post-2011 financial information and the jury could not have included these damages in its verdict.
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In an IPR petition filed by petitioner C&D Zodiac, Inc., the petitioner sought review of patent owner, B/E Aerospace, Inc.’s U.S. Patent No. 8,590,838, directed to space-saving aircraft enclosures, including lavatories, closets, and galleys. The petition challenged the validity of claims under Section 102 and 103 based on, among other things, a publication entitled McDonnell Douglas DC-10 Customer Configuration Summary (Oct. 1978) referred to as an “Orange Book,” presumably because of its orange cover.

The Board granted the petition based on multiple grounds, including the obviousness of the claims in view of a prior art patent to Betts and the Orange Book. Critical to the Board’s holding was its determination that the Orange Book satisfied the printed publication requirement for prior art purposes.
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In this patent infringement action, Apple challenged the opinions of the plaintiff’s damage expert on several bases, including the determination of a royalty rate based on the price of third-party applications.

First, Apple contended that the expert’s, Mr. Bratic’s, “analysis is deficient and unreliable because MTEL’s technical expert categorically stated that he never evaluated any third party apps.” The district court rejected this challenge as the technical expert, Dr. Nettleton, asserted that he did, in fact, have conversations with Mr. Bratic over the course of “two, possibly three, phone calls in fact.” The district court also stated that “Apple’s complaint that Mr. Bratic is merely ‘parroting conclusions’ also fails, as even Apple acknowledges that Mr. Bratic ‘must … rely on a technical expert to support his opinion concerning the functionality of the selected third-party apps’ since he is not himself a technical expert.” Although the district court was sensitive to the “credibility concerns” raised by Apple, it stated that cross-examination was “the ideal vehicle with which to address such concerns.”
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Defendant Stealth Cam, LLC (“Stealth Cam”) requested that the district court reconsider its Claim Construction Order holding that the term “extending parallel” was not indefinite.

The district court first noted that under the local rules a party must show “compelling circumstances” to obtain permission to file a motion to reconsider, D. Minn. L.R. 7.1(j), and that a motion to reconsider should not be employed to relitigate old issues, but rather to “afford an opportunity for relief in extraordinary circumstances.” Dale & Selby Superette & Deli v. U.S. Dept. of Agric., 838 F. Supp. 1346, 1348 (D. Minn. 1993).
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In the matter pending in the Western District of Texas, Katrinecz, et al. v. Motorola Mobility LLC, Motorola moved to dismiss the complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. In its complaint, the plaintiffs alleged that Motorola infringed U.S. Patent No. 7,284,872 entitled “Low power, low cost illuminated keyboards and keypads.” The ‘872 patent lists Plaintiffs Katrinecz and Byrd as the inventors. In April 1997, the plaintiffs conceived of a keyboard invention and during the summer of 1997 they developed prototypes. In October 1997, they engaged attorneys and filed their first patent application for the invention on August 26, 1998.

During this time, on August 11, 1998, Katrinecz and his spouse executed a Marital Settlement Agreement dissolving their nine-year marriage. The Florida State court rendered a Final Judgment Dissolving Marriage on September 17, 1998. Motorola contended that the invention of the ‘872 patent was developed during the marriage and thus should be considered personal property subject to equitable distribution upon dissolution of the marriage. Motorola further asserted that “when a marital settlement agreement fails to address personal property, that property is co-owned by both spouses by operation of law upon entry of final judgment dissolving the marriage.” Consequently, because the Agreement did not expressly address the disposition of the rights to the invention, Motorola argued that the rights became co-owned by the inventor and his ex-spouse upon entry of the final judgment on September 17, 1998. Because the ex-spouse co-owned the patent when it issued and because she was not a party to the action, the court lacks subject matter jurisdiction and must dismiss the case.
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BNB Health Grades, Inc. (“Health Grades”) filed a patent infringement action against MDx Medical, Inc., d/b/a Vitals.com (“MDx”). During the litigation, Health Grades identified licensing agreements and associated systems that it contended could support additional contentions relating to Health Grades’ claim for indirect infringement.” After MDx declined to produce the additional information, Health Grades filed a motion to compel.
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In the matter pending in the Northern District of California, Aylus Networks, Inc. v. Apple, Inc., Apple moved to stay the litigation pending inter partes review of the patent-in-suit. On October 9, 2013, plaintiff Aylus Networks filed suit against Apple for infringement of U.S. Patent No. RE44,414. On September 29, 2014, Apple filed two petitions for inter partes review of the ‘414 patent. On September 30, 2014, Apple filed the instant stay motion.

The Court began by reciting the applicable law, particularly in cases such as this one where the motion to stay was sought before the PTAB instituted any proceedings against the patent-in-suit:

Courts have inherent power to manage their dockets and stay proceedings, including the authority to order a stay pending conclusion of a PTO reexamination.” Ethicon, Inc. v. Quigg, 849 F.2d 1422, 1426-27 (Fed. Cir. 1988) (citations omitted). However, a “court is under no obligation to delay its own proceedings” where parallel litigation is pending before the PTAB. See Robert Bosch Healthcare Systems, Inc. v. Cardiocom, LLC, C-14-1575 EMC, 2014 WL 3107447 at *2 (N.D. Cal. Jul. 3, 2014). This is especially true when the Patent Office has yet to decide whether to institute IPR proceedings. See, e.g., VirtualAgility Inc. v. Salesforce.com, Inc., 759 F.3d 1307, 1315-16 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (noting that the case for a stay is “stronger after post-grant review has been instituted”); Loyalty Conversion Sys. Corp. v. American Airlines, Inc., 13-CV-665, 2014 WL 3736514 at *1-2 (E.D. Tx. Jul. 29, 2014) (Bryson, J.) (noting that the “majority of courts . . . have denied stay requests when the PTAB has not yet acted on the petition for review”).

In determining whether to stay this litigation, the Court considers three factors: “(1) whether discovery is complete and whether a trial date has been set; (2) whether a stay will simplify the issues in question and trial of the case; and (3) whether a stay would unduly prejudice or present a clear tactical disadvantage to the non-moving party.” Robert Bosch, 2014 WL 3107447 at *3 (citation omitted).

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