A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for search: pennypack

Throwback Thursday to an Undead Inventor

Emily S. DiBenedetto, May 24, 2023
Expert Witness Pennypack

Today we highlight a decade-old opinion involving an inventor’s death, the reports of which were greatly exaggerated. The moral of the story: trust but verify. Do a Google search, even if you have it on good authority. Question your assumptions.

It's an oddball case that provides the perfect foil for Nate’s article yesterday involving the opposite fact-pattern—a dead expert. Here, an inventor thought expired was “not only alive, but also willing (‘indeed eager’)” to testify in the upcoming trial, scheduled only ten days away.

In an unusual mix-up, plaintiff relied on testimony from the plaintiff’s 30(b)(6) witness, a former high-ranking officer for plaintiff's company, who said that the inventor was deceased. Where'd he get that information? Several of plaintiff’s …

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It's For A Good Cause

Nathan R. Hoeschen, Jan. 31, 2023
Scheduling Order Pennypack

In the before time, when the green grass grew tall even in the wan Wilmington sun, all scheduling orders had two rounds of contentions, one early in the case and another near the close of fact discovery. A bit over two years ago, Judge Connolly shook things up by introducing a new form order in his cases that included only a single round of contentions early in the case and requiring "good cause" to amend.

AI-Generated, displayed with permission

And so, on this slow news day, I decided to take a look back at how often parties manage to show the requisite good cause to amend their contentions in cases assigned to Judge Connolly (many of these are decided in the first instance by a magistrate judge).

The upshot is, that most of these motions seem to succeed. DocketNavigator shows 10 such motions in cases assigned to Judge Connolly (which strikes me as low, but I'm not a soulless trawling algorithm, so what do I know?). Of those 7 have been granted, and only 3 have been denied. Normally I would put in the percentages here, but I trust you all to do the math on this one.

This brings to mind another question, which I shall raise in a further blog post on another slow day, does Judge Connolly receive fewer motions like these than our judges who don't specifically require good cause? I.e., are parties who would otherwise just file late contentions and take their shot under Pennypack factors deciding not to do so because they know they can't show good cause?!

All this and more on next weeks episode of IPDE! (Batman theme plays)

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Court Grants Daubert Motion Based on One-Sentence Argument in Footnote

Andrew E. Russell, Aug. 10, 2022
Pennypack Daubert

Football
Dave Adamson, Unsplash

It happens all of the time: You've got arguments A, B, and C that you want to fit in your brief, but you don't have the space to address them all.

What to do? Cut the weaker arguments?

For most attorneys, the answer is: of course not! They move the lesser argument to a footnote in a hail-mary attempt to win if the better arguments fail.

Does it work? Not usually. Here in D. Del., judges have suggested that parties waive arguments when they present them only in cursory footnotes, and Judge Noreika recently noted that "courts traditionally do not consider arguments presented entirely in footnotes." Nw. Univ. v. Universal Robots A/S, C.A. No. …

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What Can a Patentee Do When the Court Excludes Its Damages Expert? Maybe Force the Other Side’s Damages Expert to Testify for the Patentee.

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 29, 2021
Damages Experts

With this case, the hits just keep coming...
With this case, the hits just keep coming... Mitya Ivanov, Unsplash

What do you do when your expert's damages opinion gets excluded, the Court rules you cannot proceed based solely on the factual evidence, and you bear the burden of proof?

According to an opinion from Judge Andrews yesterday, one option is to call the other side’s expert—even if the other side otherwise refuses to put her on the stand.

This Case Again?

We've actually talked about this case, Shure Inc. v. ClearOne, Inc., C.A. No. 19-1343-RGA-CJB (D. Del.), quite a bit at this point, including defendant's efforts to use DJ jurisdiction to keep part of the case out of Delaware, and plaintiff's effort …

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Judge Burke Chides Parties for Time-Wasting Motion to Strike

David M. Fry, March 17, 2021
Motion to Strike Pennypack

We've written several posts about the Pennypack factors and how hard it can be to win a motion to strike in D. Del. The upshot is that it's often better to simply reach agreement on a curative remedy rather than spend time on full-blown motion practice.

Case in point: on Monday, Judge Burke denied a motion to strike a two-page supplemental expert declaration on a patentability issue. Applying the Pennypack factors, he concluded

that having to respond to the supplemental declaration (which, after all, relates to one discrete issue, and is only two pages long) would occasion some great prejudice to Defendants. The issue can be resolved by permitting Defendants to file a supplemental sur-rebuttal expert report on …
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Judge Andrews: Late DOE Claims Are DOA

David M. Fry, Feb. 24, 2021
DOE Motion to Strike

Although the Pennypack factors for exclusion are notoriously difficult to meet, judges in D. Del. have been excluding late-disclosed theories more frequently than in the past.

Case in point: on Friday, Judge Andrews granted a motion to strike DOE theories asserted for the first time in an opening expert report. The plaintiff offered a number of excuses for disclosing the theories when it did—"it was only able to collect evidence to support its new DOE theories" after a COVID-delayed source code review, it lacked supporting evidence until a technical deposition in November 2020, and so on.

Judge Andrews not only rejected these excuses, but took it a step further—coming very close to finding that the plaintiff acted in …

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Another Day, Another Doctrine of Equivalents Argument Excluded

Andrew E. Russell, Feb. 1, 2021
Contentions Expert Discovery

Even when plaintiffs know of the potential weak spots in their infringement cases, they sometimes fail to address DOE until too late, or they offer a DOE analysis so weak that it gets excluded or wiped out by summary judgment.

That's what happened last week, when Chief Judge Stark struck a DOE opinion after a plaintiff tried to squeak by on the idea that its late DOE argument should be permitted because it never affirmatively disclaimed DOE:

Arendi's passing reference to DOE in its complaints followed by its lack of affirmative disclaimer of DOE theories (see, e.g., C.A. No. 12−1595 D.I. 238 at 5) ("Arendi has never asserted that its claims were limited to literal infringement") does …
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KB-Tagged Articles on IPDE

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 20, 2025
IPDE

Great Sand Dunes National Park
Andrew E. Russell, displayed with permission

Here at IPDE, our posts often fall into a few distinct categories. The most common type of post is "look at this interesting opinion that issued! Here is what happened, along with some context and meta-commentary."

(The second most common is probably some variation on "look at this Pennypack decision!" or "here is yet another post about redactions"—but we'll set those aside for now).

My favorite kind of post that we do, though, are our broader discussions that cut across multiple cases or judges, that address a fundamental District of Delaware practices, or that are just helpful tips for attorneys.

These are a bit more timeless—things like District of Delaware deposition tips, …

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Judge Fallon Re-Affirms Duty to Supplement Contentions Without Waiting Until Final Deadline

Andrew E. Russell, April 26, 2025
Motion to Strike Motion to Compel

You know what to do...
You know what to do... AI-Generated, displayed with permission

Many District of Delaware scheduling orders in patent cases include deadlines for both "initial" and "final" infringement and invalidity contentions. In those cases, parties often argue that having a deadline for "final" invalidity contentions means there is no obligation to supplement in the period between initial and final contentions.

The obligation to supplement under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26, after all, states that it applies to Rule 26(a) disclosures, interrogatories, RFAs, and RFPs—but not explicitly to "contentions" required by a scheduling order.

I've seen the Court go both ways on this. The judges often seem willing to grant a motion to compel earlier responses, saying that early supplementation is required …

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Don't Act Like You Wouldn't Do It

Nathan R. Hoeschen, April 1, 2025
Pizza Motions In Limine

I will speak a truth that many of you have suspected. Sometimes we (well, I) pick a case just because it has a fun name. My original post today was about HQ Specialty Pharma Corp. v. Fresenius Kabi USA, LLC, C.A. No. 21-1714-MN. Honestly the case was too fact intensive to easily convert to a general interest blog post. On the other hand, it contained a great deal of discussion of the testimony of a New Jersey Pharmaceutical executive named Mr. Pizza.

"I'm cooked!" AI-Generated, displayed with permission

The whole thing ended up being just jokes and out of context slices ("Mr. Kelly . . . doubted whether Mr. Pizza 'had any knowledge of the [prior art] references'") …

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