A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: Contention Interrogatories

Leave It To The Experts

Nathan R. Hoeschen, May 8, 2025
Contention Interrogatories

As we've covered exhaustively, Delaware favors the use of contention interrogatories. As discovery requests go, these are often some of the more burdensome ones to deal with, and so the responding party will frequently respond with all manner of possible objections.

One response that I see from time to time is that a contention topic seeks information that is really the subject of an expert report, and thus that no response is necessary until the reports are due.

This is where expert reports come from
This is where expert reports come from AI-Generated, displayed with permission

This was exactly the approach that the defendant took last week in Astellas Pharma Inc. et al v. Sandoz Inc., C.A. No. 20-1589-JFB-EGT, D.I. 779 (D. Del. May 6, …

View

Is the Law on Contention Interrogatory Responses Evolving? Judges OK Deferring Contention Interrogatory Response Until After Claim Construction Ruling, or Even After Expert Reports

Andrew E. Russell, Feb. 7, 2025
Contention Interrogatories

Zig Zag
Jack Finnigan, Unsplash

Contention interrogatory responses are a frequent topic of dispute. In theory, using damages as an example, the way it works is this:

  1. Defendant, who does not have the burden, sends a contention interrogatory.
  2. Plaintiff provides contentions.
  3. Defendant takes discovery based on the contentions.
  4. Plaintiff provides expert reports that fairly elaborate on the contentions.
  5. Defendant responds using the discovery it took based on the contentions.
  6. Plaintiff offers expert testimony at trial that is a fair elaboration on their reports.
  7. Defendant moves to strike any testimony that goes beyond the reports.

The process can get hung up on step 2, however, because parties may try to short-circuit the process and avoid giving away or getting nailed down on …

View

Court Rejects General Claim Construction Interrogatory—But POSITA Interrogatory Is Fine

Andrew E. Russell, Aug. 28, 2024
Contention Interrogatories Contentions

It was tough to find an image for this. Just imagine each lego head is a proposed claim construction.
It was tough to find an image for this. Just imagine each lego head is a proposed claim construction. Wu Yi, Unsplash

The District of Delaware supports contention interrogatories generally (but not contention 30(b)(6) topics). I remember that, back before the Court adopted the Default Standard in 2011, contention interrogatories were the main way to define and limit the scope of the case during fact discovery.

But contention interrogatories are not without limits. On Friday, in LeFebvre v. Extrabux, Inc., C.A. No. 23-167 (D. Del.), Judge Burke issued a decision on a discovery dispute about a contention interrogatory seeking claim construction positions. He held that a party can't just ask the opposing party for its …

View

A Handy Transcript

Andrew E. Russell, Nov. 9, 2022
Contentions KB

Bookmarks
Chiara F, Unsplash

I thought I'd share an old transcript that has come in handy a number of times since it issued back in 2013, where Judge Andrews made a helpful ruling about how and when patentees must respond to conception date interrogatories—an issue that comes up frequently.

In Vehicle Interface Techs., LLC v. Jaguar Land Rover N. Am., LLC, C.A. No. 12-1285-RGA (D. Del.), the defendant filed a discovery dispute to compel a full response to an interrogatory asking for the date of conception and reduction to practice.

The patentee had responded, but the answer was not very helpful. According to the discovery dispute letter:

[The patentee] stated that the sole inventor . . …
View

Archive