A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: Deposition Location

In Completely Unsurprising Result, Court Orders Depositions of Employee Inventors, Denies Burden Objection to 30(b)(1) Deposition Notices

Andrew E. Russell, Nov. 12, 2025
FRCP 30(b)(1) Motion to Compel

France—the place where these inventors will probably not be deposed.
France—the place where these inventors will probably not be deposed. Gloria Villa, Unsplash

Last week in Pierre Fabre Medicament SAS v. Rubicon Research Private Ltd., C.A. No. 24-811-JLH-SRF (D. Del.), Judge Fallon ruled on a set of discovery disputes involving a motion to compel the patentee to make its inventors—who are employees residing in France—available for fact depositions under FRCP 30(b)(1).

In this case, it looks like the accused infringer has a an improper inventorship defense—which sounds like a very good reason to want to depose the inventors.

The interesting thing, to me, is that the patentee tried to fight these depositions at all. The Court easily (and unsurprisingly) batted away each of their objections.

The …

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Where do our witnesses have to be deposed, anyway?

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 13, 2025
KB Scheduling Orders

Where?!
Greg Rosenke, Unsplash

One common question in D. Del. cases is whether or not the plaintiff or counterclaim plaintiff must bring its witnesses to Delaware for deposition.

You'd think this would be completely settled by this point, but it still seems to come up from time to time. This post collects some of the relevant authority (Ctrl-D or ⌘-D to bookmark) and talks about a new opinion on this from last week.

Plaintiffs Must Bring Their Witnesses Here for Deposition

Several cases have held that, by default, a plaintiff must bring its "witnesses" here to the District of Delaware for deposition:

The general rule with respect to the location of depositions is that the plaintiff must produce its …
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Judge Fallon Denies Motion for Remote Deposition, Compels Plaintiff to Appear In-Person in Delaware

Andrew E. Russell, Jan. 17, 2025
Depositions Deposition Location

Delaware Memorial Bridge
Chintan Jani, Unsplash

This isn't a surprising result, but it's still a good data point on attempting to force a post-COVID remote deposition.

In Etienne Maugain v. FCA US LLC, C.A. No. 22-116-JLH-SRF (D. Del. Jan. 15, 2025), the plaintiffs asked the defendant to take their deposition remotely, rather than in person, or to take the deposition where they reside (offering to reimburse travel costs). They cited cited medical conditions, dependent care obligations and work schedules. The defendant refused, and the parties ultimately brought cross motions to compel an in-person deposition in Delaware, and for a protective order to prevent such a deposition.

In their motion, the plaintiffs apparently dropped their objections on medical and dependent-care …

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Judge Wolson Rejects Attempt to Limit Deposition Discovery & Force Remote Depositions in ANDA Action

Andrew E. Russell, Sept. 10, 2023
Remote Depositions Depositions

An attorney's view after many a deposition—if you're lucky enough to catch a flight back that night.
An attorney's view after many a deposition—if you're lucky enough to catch a flight back that night. Eva Darron, Unsplash

This On Friday, Judge Wolson addressed—and rejected—an effort by an ANDA defendant to limit deposition discovery on the basis that discovery is, in its view, just not that important in an ANDA action. As set they put it:

This is an ANDA case. Black letter law holds that the infringement issues in an ANDA case are controlled by the ANDA itself. . . . Months ago, Defendants produced the ANDA and ANDA product samples from which the relevant infringement analysis must be derived. Plaintiff has now noticed the deposition of both Defendants and seven individuals. But the information that …
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