The doctrine of equivalents is often treated as the legal equivalent of going "c'mon....c'mon! its all the same."
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It's not uncommon to see it included in infringement contentions in terms that just note that, to the extent the noodlewiggler (TM) does not literally infringe claim 38 of of the '123 patent, it's insubstantially different, and performs the same function in the same way to achieve the same result, and is lame."
Judge Andrews issued an opinion today that neatly illustrates the problem with that tactic. The defendant in Carrum Techs., LLC v. Ford Motor Comp. C.A. No. 18-1647-RGA (D. Del. Nov. 9, 2023) (Mem. Op.) moved for summary judgment on the basis of a …
Ouch. This week in MED-EL Elektromedizinische Geräte Ges.m.b.H. v. Advanced Bionics LLC, C.A. No. 18-1530-JDW (D. Del. Oct. 30, 2023), Judge Wolson addressed a motion in limine to exclude testimony from both of the accused infringer's witnesses on their prior use defense.
The accused infringer didn't offer expert testimony at all on invalidity, according to the briefing. D.I. 399 at 3. Instead, it asserted a prior use defense in its contentions, presumably intending get it in through fact witness testimony.
The patentee first moved in limine to preclude the defense due to a lack of expert testimony. But the Court held that a party can present an invalidity defense without it—and compared the motion to an improper SJ motion:
The first part of AB’s Motion In Limine #1 is a summary judgment motion in disguise. MED-EL asserts invalidity in this case. If AB had a basis to argue that the absence of expert testimony dooms that claim, then it should have moved for summary judgment on the issue. It didn’t, and it can’t use an in limine motion to dispose of MED-EL’s claim. If AB believes that the lack of expert testimony means that MED-EL cannot meet its burden, then AB can seek relief under Rule 50 at the close of MED-EL’s case at trial.
(We've talked before about the risks of bringing what should be an SJ motion as a MIL.)
In other words, offering no expert testimony could be OK. The accused infringer, however, also failed to ...
Judge Burke had an interesting opinion on Tuesday striking final contentions served after the deadline in the scheduling order.
It's become increasingly common in the district for late-served final contentions to be analyzed under the less forgiving good cause standard of Rule 16 without reference to thePennypack Factors. Even so, it was a bit surprising to see the Court strike contentions which were filed just a month after the deadline, which the Court addressed directly in the Order:
This result might seem harsh in light of the facts here, since Plaintiff submitted the belated contentions at issue only about a month after the filing deadline called for by the Scheduling Order. …
We've talked before about how asserting invalidity based on system prior art (as opposed to written publications, for example) can be tricky, because accused infringers can face all kinds of sometimes-unexpected difficulties with proving up the prior art.
Parties often get into sticky evidentiary questions about exactly what kinds of evidence are sufficient to show that the relevant prior art was on sale before the priority date, and how the prior art functioned—and whether that all of that evidence has authenticity or hearsay issues.
On Friday, Magistrate Judge Burke issued a long oral report and recommendation to grant summary judgment of no invalidity based on a system prior art reference. In the case, the defendants relied …
Back in September we wrote about how Judge Andrews rejected an expert who relied on a 50/50 starting point to show damages in a patent case. We noted at the time that the defendant had moved to strike any follow-up theory by the plaintiff, and it wasn't clear that the Court had ruled on it before trial began.
Now we know what actually happened. Yesterday, the Court released its opinion on the motion to strike. In its opinion, the Court explained that after the plaintiff lost its damages expert, the plaintiff tried to "cobble together" a damages theory from various facts on the Friday before trial. The Court struck that new theory:
It's a common dilemma in expert discovery: the other side's expert says something new in an opening report, you move to strike it, and you get a hearing date after the deadline for your rebuttal report. Do you have your expert respond (and weaken your prejudice arguments)? Or do you double down on your motion to strike (and risk losing the ability to respond altogether)?
In D. Del., the second option is a huge gamble. Yes, it's possible to persuade our judges to strike late-disclosed expert opinions (even under the Third Circuit's lenient Pennypackfactors). But if you won't get a ruling before your responsive report is due, ignoring the new material can …
In an opinion last Thursday, Judge Andrews struck a defendants' prior art arguments as to two references, after it offered them for the first time in an opening expert report served nearly two years after final infringement contentions.
The Court found that the prior art arguments were intentionally withheld, because the defendant used the same expert as other parties in another case on the same patents, and those parties had asserted invalidity based on the relevant references (through the expert) nine months or more before the expert did so here:
[T]here is no explanation why Defendant did nothing to alert Plaintiff of its new theories in the nine months or more before the expert …
Sometimes people think that they have to offer expert testimony to rebut the other side's expert on every single issue. That's not true, at least when the other side has the burden of proof.
I've represented a defendant in a jury trial representing where we offered no damages expert at all, and it worked out well (under the circumstances—I'm definitely not saying it's a good general strategy). We poked holes in the opposing expert's theories, and the other side had no way to return fire and no reply report in which the fix the issues.
Judge Andrews addressed something like that last week in an opinion on a motion in limine. Defendant had offered expert …
Although it requires some reading between the redacted lines, Judge Stark's recent ruling in H. Lundbeck A/S v. Apotex, Inc., C.A. No. 18-88-LPS is worth the effort. It shows that while sometimes exclusion orders leave the door open a crack to introduce the excluded evidence in some other fashion, that is not always the case.
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