And so began a recent order from Judge Posner in the ongoing dispute between Apple and Motorola over various patents directed to features of smart phones. Apple and Motorola have each asserted patent claims against the other and, as the case approaches trial, Judge Posner has issued an order regarding the phases and sequence of the trial.
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In this patent infringement action pending in the Eastern District of Texas between SimpleAir and a number of defendants, including Apple, the defendants filed a motion in limine to preclude SimpleAir from referencing the revenue or profits associated with Defendants’ products or Defendants’ overall economic status, profitability, or relative financial strength. In ruling on the motion in limine, the district court granted the motion in part and denied the motion in part.
The defendants apparently filed the motion in limine to prevent the plaintiff from trying to influence the jury on liability and damages by merely referencing defendants’ financial strength and profitability. The district court granted the motion in part, ordering that SimpleAir would be prohibited from discussing the total revenue or profits of defendants’ products. The district court did permit, however, SimpleAir to discuss the incremental change in revenue, but only to the limited scope the expert addressed it in his expert report.
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Plaintiff, Imaginal Systems, LLC (“Imaginal”) filed a patent infringement action against Leggett & Platt, Inc. (“Leggett”) and Simmons Bedding Company (“Simmons”) over three patents, which pertain to automatic stapling machines and a method of manufacturing box spring mattresses. The district court ruled on summary judgment that Imaginal’s patents were valid and that the defendants directly infringed the patents. The district court subsequently held a bench trial on issues of willfulness and equitable defenses. After the district court concluded that the infringement was not willful and rejected the equitable defenses, the district court conducted a jury trial on the issue of damages and the jury returned a $5 million verdict in plaintiff’s favor.
As the district court explained, “[a]t trial, Plaintiff asked for a damages award based on a running royalty. According to Plaintiffs expert, a reasonable royalty in this case was $15,933,037 as of the end of 2011. Defendants, on the other hand, argued that a running royalty for an automatic stapling machine is not prevalent in the bedding industry and asked the jury to limit the damages award to $296,621. The jury returned a verdict of $5,000,000 in Plaintiff’s favor.”
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On remand to the district court after the Federal Circuit’s en banc decision in Therasense v. Becton, Dickinson and Co., the district court reviewed the procedural posture of the case and the landmark Therasense decision. The district court noted that “Therasense worked a seismic shift in the law of inequitable conduct,” and particularly that “materiality would henceforth use a but-for definition, meaning that submission of the withheld item would have led to a rejection.” The district court also analyzed the decision including the closeness of the vote on the new standard, stating that “[d]espite the closeness of the decision and the importance of the question to our patent system and national economy, no petition for certiorari was filed in the Supreme Court.”
Before applying the facts to the new standard articulated by the Federal Circuit, the district court noted the Federal Circuit’s instructions on remand (1) that the “district court should determine whether there is clear an convincing evidence demonstrating that Sanghera or Pope knew of the EPO brief, knew of their materiality, and made the conscious decision not to disclose them in order to deceive the PTO” and (2) the “district court should determine whether the PTO would have granted the patent but for Abbott’s failure to disclose the EPO briefs. …”
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ArrivalStar filed a motion seeking to extend the deadline for providing its preliminary infringement contentions arguing that the district court’s scheduling order only provided fourteen days for ArrivalStar to prepare and serve its preliminary infringement contentions, that ArrivalStar was misled by Enroute Systems, the opposing party, into believing that the case management deadlines were on hold while the parties explored settlement and denying an extension would severely prejudice ArrivalStar by precluding consideration of its claims on the merits.
In analyzing ArrivalStar’s request, the district court noted that case management deadlines could only be modified by a showing of good cause under Fed.R.Civ.P. 16(b)(4). The district court then concluded that none of the arguments raised by ArrivalStar established good cause for the requested extension.
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Plaintiff, Round Rock Research (“Round Rock”), filed a motion to compel non-infringement contentions from Defendant Dell (“Dell”) and Dell moved to limit the number of asserted complaints brought by plaintiff. Round Rock asserted ten patents against 125 products of Dell and Dell contended that Round Rock had asserted approximately 82 claims from the ten patents-at-issue. As a result, Dell asserted that the large number of claims was unmanageable for claim construction, fact discovery, expert reports, depositions and trial.
In considering Round Rock’s motion to compel non-infringement contentions, the district court noted that the plaintiff requested a response to its interrogatory seeking Dell’s non-infringement contentions. In response, Dell asserted that the interrogatory was prematurely seeking its position on claim construction and that the interrogatory was unduly burdensome and unreasonable given the number of claims asserted by Round Rock.
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The defendant filed a motion to stay pending reexamination of the plaintiff’s patent. The district court noted that the plaintiff and defendant are both participants in the oxygen concentrator market. Inogen filed the action on November 4, 2011 asserting infringement of two of its patents. On February 8, 2012, Inova filed a request for inter partes reexamination of both of the patents-in-suit. The PTO acknowledged receipt of the reexamination request and the district court noted that the PTO must decide whether to grant the reexamination request within three months.
After discussing the relevant case law on stays pending reexamination, the district court analyzed the stage of the litigation, simplification of issues, undue prejudice or clear tactical disadvantage to the plaintiff, With respect to the stage of the litigation, the district court noted that Imogen implicitly conceded that the case is in an early stage of litigation and that no discovery dates or trial dates would be set until mid-April. Accordingly, the district court found that this factor weighed in favor of a stay.
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In response to Oracle’s third expert on damages (which was submitted after the district court had struck parts of the first two reports), Google’s damage experts were permitted to submit supplemental damage reports. With respect to the patent damages, the district court summarized the supplemental report as follows: “In his supplemental report on patent damages, Dr. Leonard conducts a so-called ‘forward citation’ analysis to arrive at his own ranking of the 22 patents from Dr. Cockburn’s report. This was done to critique Dr. Cockburn’s ‘upper bound’ opinion that three patents in suit were the most valuable of the 22. Now that Dr. Cockburn’s ‘upper bound’ opinion has been stricken and the number of the asserted patents reduced, the only remaining issues is whether Dr. Leonard can opine that the ‘104 patent ranks in the ‘middle or worse'” of the top 22 patents. Specifically, whether Dr. Leonard can opine that the ‘104 patent ranks 17th among the top 22 patents under the forward-citation analysis (Rpt. At 7).”
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As a preliminary matter, Judge Posner consolidated the six patent cases that were filed by Brandeis University against various defendants, finding that they involve a number of common issues of law and that judicial efficiency would be maximized by consolidation. “These six cases are hereby consolidated under 1:12-cv-01508, pursuant to Fed. P. 42(a). The parties agree that they involve a number of common issues of law, and I believe that judicial efficiency will be maximized by consolidation. I will consider in due course the defendants’ request for separate trials of issues, particularly damages, that vary significantly across the six cases.”
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In the ongoing struggle between Apple and Motorola over claims of patent infringement in just one of many battles that is taking place across the country over smart phones, both parties proposed claim constructions that were not particularly well-written for lay jurors.
After reviewing the claim construction briefs and stating that the briefs “well written and helpful,” the district court, Judge Posner, stated that he had a concern regarding the proposed claim constructions.
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