A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: Search Terms

Searching with Search Terms
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This is a dispute I've seen come up in a few cases. The D. Del. Default Standard for Discovery includes a provision about search terms, setting forth that if a party uses search terms to locate responsive documents, it must disclose the search terms and allow the opposing party to request up to 10 additional terms.

This provision can cause some confusion. Sometimes parties read the Court's Default Standard, see the search term provision, and think that's the only way to collect ESI. Or, sometimes, a party really wants to dictate search terms to the other side, and argues that the Default Standard requires the use of search terms.

It doesn't. A party can elect …

Yeah. Everybody can see the frog.
Yeah. Everybody can see the frog. Kieran Wood, Unsplash

As Delaware counsel, I sometimes have to say something along the lines of "the Court is going to see right through that" or "nobody is as sly as they think they are."

Usually this is in the context of something like slipping wholesale invalidity arguments into a claim construction brief (seriously? You think you are going to win SJ of anticipation at claim construction?) or "just flagging" a completely unrelated and irrelevant issue in a discovery dispute.

I saw an example of this last week in Speyside Medical, LLC v. Medtronic Corevalve, LLC, C.A. No. 20-361−GBW−CJB, D.I. 290 (D. Del. Jun. 26, 2023).

In Speyside, the …