A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: Trial

Judge Hall Cuts Parties' Trial Time after Seventh Discovery Dispute Hearing

Andrew E. Russell, Sept. 18, 2023
Trial Time Trial

"Do we want to bring this discovery dispute, or do we want to cross their corporate rep at trial? Choices, choices..." Vladislav Babienko, Unsplash

We've written before about how the Court sometimes sets up escalating obstacles for parties who are insensitive to the Court's time and bring too many discovery disputes. In that case, the Court gave the parties "homework" (writing letters to the Court) after their seventh discovery dispute.

In Apple Inc. v. Masimo Corporation, C.A. No. 22-1377-MN-JLH (D. Del.), the Court referred all pre-trial matters up until dispositive motions to Magistrate Judge Hall.

Judge Hall took action after the parties brought what looks like seven discovery disputes. The docket shows the Court's escalating response to the parties disputes:

  • June 1 - First teleconference
  • June 16 - Second teleconference
  • July 7 - First in-person hearing
  • July 14 - Second in-person hearing
  • August 3 - Third in-person hearing
  • September 1 - Fourth in-person hearing; Court warns that future disputes will be charged to trial time
  • September 14 - Fifth in-person hearing; Court charges the parties' trial time

Guessing from the docket, it looks like the parties brought a number of rapid-fire discovery disputes starting on June 1. For the third dispute in about a month, the Court increased the friction on the parties by forcing them to come to Delaware to argue the disputes.

That doesn't seem to have slowed them down at all. After three in-person disputes ...

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Bifurcation Patterns

Emily DiBenedetto, March 27, 2023
Damages Trial

Density Column
AI-Generated, displayed with permission

Earlier this month, Judge Williams denied a defendant’s motion to bifurcate a second patent trial in Cirba, Inc. et al v. VMware, Inc., C.A. 19-742, D.I. 1623 (D. Del. Mar. 7, 2023) (oral order). In that case, the patentee had won an initial victory at trial, but the Court later granted a motion for a new trial based on evidentiary issues.

The defendant moved to stay the second trial because nearly all of the patents at issue had been found invalid—or were in danger of being found invalid—during a pending re-exam proceeding. The parties finished briefing, but the Court has not yet ruled or heard oral argument on the motion to stay. …

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Be Careful with That Joint Statement of Uncontested Facts. You Might Not Be Able to Walk It Back

Andrew E. Russell, Jan. 16, 2023
Trial Trial Practice

Artist's rendition of a pretrial order printed without tabs
Artist's rendition of a pretrial order printed without tabs JJ Ying, Unsplash

[UPDATE: Thank you to all who flagged the typo in the original title. No, the irony is not lost on me that we had a typo in the word "careful"!]

Oof, this one may have been painful. Last month in Victaulic Company v. ASC Engineered Solutions, LLC, C.A. No. 20-887-GBW-JLH (D. Del.), the defendant apparently asserted at least two non-infringement defenses, one based on a "groove" limitation and one based on a "radius" limitation.

The defendant asserted the groove limitation defense in response to a summary judgment motion. Then, the following series of events occurred:

  • December 6, 2022: The Court denies the summary judgment …
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Judge Andrews Splits Counterclaim Patents into Separate Trial

Andrew E. Russell, Dec. 21, 2022
Trial Case Dispositive Motions

Kiwi Split in Half
engin akyurt, Unsplash

In Prolitec Inc. v. ScentAir Technologies, LLC, C.A. No. 20-984-RGA-MPT (D. Del.), the defendant brought counterclaims asserting their own four patents, in addition to the three originally asserted by the plaintiff.

During fact discovery, the plaintiff filed an FRCP 12(c) motion for judgment on the pleadings under § 101. Defendant pushed back, arguing that the motion was untimely—both because it was filed two years into the case (i.e., it was too late), and because of "the Court’s general disfavor of multiple rounds of dispositive motions" (i.e., it was too early). D.I. 115 at 1.

The plaintiff argued that its motion was timely, as FRCP 12(c) just requires the motion to be filed …

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Chief Judge Connolly Dismisses Claims on Patents Withdrawn Prior to ANDA Trial with Prejudice

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 24, 2022
Trial Claim Narrowing

"Do you think 11 patents might be more than we need? Nah" Maciej Ruminkiewicz, Unsplash

Back in May, we wrote about an order by Chief Judge Connolly directing an ANDA plaintiff to cut back to 4 claims prior to trial, or potentially face a more difficult road for injunctive relief.

Plaintiff cut back to 6 claims, apparently dropping five patents from the case, and the bench trial proceeded.

Last month, Chief Judge Connolly issued his post-trial opinion regarding infringement and invalidity, and directed the parties to enter a proposed order. The parties ended up disputing what should happen to those dropped claims from the five dropped patents in the final judgment:

The proposals differ with respect to the disposition …
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Court Rejects Parties' Request to Change Trial Scope After Fed. Cir. Vacates Previous Trial Result

Andrew E. Russell, Sept. 26, 2022
Trial Motion in Limine

Chart

Procedural opinions about post-appeal trials are relatively rare, at least compared to the amount of decisions on motions to dismiss or summary judgment that we see. Most cases settle long before they reach this stage. So I thought it was worth posting about how Judge Bataillon handled a new trial in C R Bard Inc. v AngioDynamics, Inc., C.A. No. 15-218-JFB-SRF (D. Del.) after the Federal Circuit vacated the result of the previous trial.

The parties in the case sought to introduce new information in the new trial, including at least one accused product that was released after the previous trial. The Court rejected that idea, holding that the new trial would be a direct repeat of …

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Judge Andrews Puts Accused Infringer on Notice that "If It Causes a Mistrial by Poor Preparation or Poor Judgment in Questioning [Certain Witnesses], It Will, at a Minimum, Have to Pay [the Patentee's] Attorney Fees"

Andrew E. Russell, Aug. 22, 2022
Expert Witness Trial

Be Careful
Josh Frenette, Unsplash

In a pair of orders last week in Shopify Inc. v. Express Mobile, Inc., C.A. No. 19-439-RGA (D. Del.), Judge Andrews set out guidelines for the trial testimony of two fact witnesses, who will offer testimony at trial regarding some prior art references (among other things).

The procedural background here is surprising. The patentee moved in limine to exclude the testimony of these witnesses, and the Court addressed the motion at a pre-trial status conference. There, the Court directed that the parties depose the witnesses and that the accused infringer submit proffers of the testimony that will be offered at trial.

That a Lot of Briefing

The parties then filed a stipulation setting …

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Can You Show the Jury a 10 Minute Video of the Other Side's Expert Just Saying "I Don't Know"?

Andrew E. Russell, April 26, 2022
Trial Video

Question Marks
Véronique Debord-Lazaro, CC BY-SA 2.0

It's great that we are getting to point of having frequent jury trials again here in Delaware. Trial is the most dynamic and interesting part of the litigation process. It's where you get to address classic questions like "Can we get this admitted into evidence even though it's not on our exhibit list?", "Where was THAT in his expert report?", and "Can we show the jury this video of the other side's expert saying 'I don't know' for ten minutes straight?"

Luckily, on that last question, we now have some precedent. According to Judge Andrews last week:

I agree with First Quality that Dr. Mitton's availability does not make the deposition inadmissible. But I nevertheless …
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Closed for Trial

Andrew E. Russell, March 26, 2022
Trial Litigation

This guy knows how to go to trial
This guy knows how to go to trial Henry Hustava

Just a blog service announcement: We'll be going on a bit of a blogging hiatus for the next week or two. Our firm handled a trial last week before Judge Andrews as local counsel, and we're set for three simultaneous trials this week before Judges Connolly, Andrews, and Noreika. Then we have yet another trial the week after, before visiting Judge Wolson.

If you're adding them up, that's five trials in three weeks as local counsel! So we're up to our necks in prep work, with about a dozen visiting co-counsel and staff using our offices as trial space, and we're going to have to slow down a bit on …

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Chief Judge Connolly Bifurcates Patent Trial: Infringement First, then Invalidity, Damages, and Willfulness

Andrew E. Russell, Feb. 26, 2022
Trial Trial Procedure

Bifurcated Cake
Henry Be, Unsplash

Bifurcation into liability and damages phases used to be common, with former Judge Robinson often splitting liability and damages, at one point saying that “bifurcation is appropriate, if not necessary, in all but exceptional patent cases.” Dutch Branch of Streamserve Dev. AB v. Exstream Software, LLC, C.A. No. 08-343-SLR, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76006, at *2 (D. Del. Aug. 26, 2009).

These days, bifurcation still happens here, but it is a bit less common than it was back then.

Earlier this month, though, Chief Judge Connolly raised bifurcation in a way I hadn't heard of, suggesting that the parties split infringement from invalidity and other issues, with jury deliberations in between:

At …
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