A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


DED
United States District Court for the District of Delaware

Judge Andrews Declines Request to Move January Trial Due to Coronavirus

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 6, 2020
COVID-19

In M2M Solutions LLC, et al. v. Sierra Wireless Am. Inc., C.A. No. 14-1102-RGA (D. Del.), the parties submitted a joint letter last week asking Judge Andrews to delay their December 2020 PTC and January 2021 jury trial until "spring 2021" due to COVID-19.

Judge Andrews quickly declined, via an oral order issued on the same day:

[T]he Court is not now inclined to continue the trial to spring 2021. Circumstances could change for the better; travel restrictions could be lifted. And the pretrial conference, at least, can be done remotely. The parties may submit a letter after Thanksgiving revisiting the issue in light of then−existing circumstances.
View

Court Permits Deposition Questions on Litigation Financing Arrangements

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 5, 2020
Depositions MTC

I thought this was interesting. Last week Judge Burke granted a motion to compel a plaintiff's witness to respond on questions about the plaintiff's litigation financing arrangements.

Apparently plaintiff's attorneys instructed the witness not to answer at the deposition, but in the discovery dispute they only argued that the information is irrelevant, and did not raise privilege. Since relevance is not a valid justification for an instruction not to answer under FRCP 30, the Court permitted defendant to re-ask the question and held that plaintiff's witness must answer.

About Those Redacted Versions

I say plaintiff "apparently" objected only on reasonableness grounds because plaintiff never filed the redacted version of its sealed letter brief—a common problem.

If parties continue …

View

Judge Noreika Awards Fees and Fees-on-Fees

Andrew E. Russell, Oct. 2, 2020
Final Judgment FRCP 54

About 204,261 of these.
About 204,261 of these. Sharon McCutcheon, Unsplash

Judge Noreika today awarded $204,261.31 in attorneys’ fees to a plaintiff in a trademark action, after the defendants fired their counsel, failed to obtain new counsel, and eventually had a default judgment entered against them.

She also awarded fees-on-fees, granting attorney fees for bringing the successful fees motion but not for a previous unsuccessful fees motion.

The previous motion was denied due to timing issues. Plaintiffs had filed it more than 14 days after the default judgment, and Judge Thynge issued an R&R holding that the 14-day fees deadline under FRCP 54 had passed.

Judge Noreika then offered the plaintiffs a second chance to file the fees motion. She ultimately disagreed …

View

Additional Sanctions In My Favorite Delaware Case

Nathan R. Hoeschen, Oct. 1, 2020
Sanctions

The Court (top center, riding an eagle) ordering additional sanctions
The Court (top center, riding an eagle) ordering additional sanctions Jupiter Fighting the Giants, Jacopo Zucchi

Following on Yesterday's post where we noted the odd and pleasing use of "Kludgy," I would like to use today's post to bring attention to another recent Delaware opinion which contains what I can only assume is the only use of the phrase "[y]ou can work with legal but at the end you will have your face burried [sic, obviously] in s***!" in a legal opinion.

The case is Citrix Systems, Inc. v. Workspot, Inc., C.A. No. 18-588, D.I. 411 (D. Del. Sept. 25, 2020), and it is a true ray of light in these dark days.

The opinion describes …

View

We've Found the Bottom: A Claim Construction So Unsupportable that It Fails the Rule 12 Plausibility Standard

Andrew E. Russell, Sept. 30, 2020
MTD § 101

The most famous use of the phrase
The most famous use of the phrase "self-evident"? Engraving by William J. Stone

In ruling on § 101 motions to dismiss, the Court typically adopts plaintiff's constructions outright, if plaintiff offers any. Those constructions may or may not be enough to avoid dismissal, but I can't recall any instance where the District of Delaware actually had to reject a construction as implausible under the FRCP 12(b)(6) standard.

Until now. In Synkloud Tech. v. HP, Inc., C.A. No. 19-1360-RGA (D. Del. Sep. 28, 2020), plaintiff tried to bake the § 101 "non-conventional" standard into the proposed claim construction. Clever! But Judge Andrews described the problems with that approach as "self-evident":

Plaintiff states that a person of ordinary skill …
View

Judge Andrews Counts References

Nathan R. Hoeschen, Sept. 25, 2020
Claim Narrowing

Clerks frantically tallying prior art references and combinations
Clerks frantically tallying prior art references and combinations Brown Abaca, Crissy Jarvis, Unsplash

This blog could be nothing but disputes about claim narrowing. We'd have 72,000 posts a year and we'd never get to the bottom of all the little sub-disputes, and how each judge prefers to handle them. I'm sure it would be quite popular.

This week in IPA Technologies Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., Judge Andrews clarified his position on one of the more common disputes -- how exactly to count "references" for the purposes of narrowing.

The defendant, Amazon, had been ordered to reduce the number of references in its invalidity contentions and had responded by limiting itself to 4 prior art "systems." …

View

Waiver, and How the Judges Have Handled Public Access to Remote Hearings

Andrew E. Russell, Sept. 24, 2020
Litigation COVID-19

It's interesting that the Court is now regularly offering public access information for remote hearings. I can't recall it doing that before the coronavirus.

The only pre-coronavirus remote hearings I can think of were for scheduling and discovery dispute conferences, where public access is not usually a concern. Scheduling conferences often took place privately in chambers even when they were in-person, and discovery dispute conferences often involve confidential information anyway. It looks like they judges are still handling these how they always have.

These days, however, the Court regularly holds all kinds of other, more substantive hearings remotely, and most of the judges have been taking steps to allow the public to attend. Here is what the judges have been …

View

Judge Andrews Lays Out Updated Thoughts on Transfer Motions, Transfers Case

Andrew E. Russell, Sept. 23, 2020
Jumara Transfer

Wilmington, <a href='#' class='abbreviation' data-bs-toggle='tooltip' data-placement='top' title='Delaware'>DE</a>
Wilmington, DE Andrew Russell, CC BY 2.0

In an opinion today, Judge Andrews laid out his updated thoughts on transfer motions, particularly in light of COVID-19 travel restrictions and the related difficulties.

Here are some interesting points re: his views:

  • In granting transfer, he focused on the fact that the Plaintiff's principal place of business was not Delaware
  • He held that convenience of counsel is irrelevant, because parties can choose their counsel.
  • As far as court congestion, he noted that "[o]ne other Delaware judge and I each individually had more old cases than the entire Western District [of Washington]," and that the Judicial Conference has recommended …
View

Judge Noreika Rules that "Justice and Equity" Are Not Standalone Considerations in Collateral-Estoppel Analysis

Nathan R. Hoeschen, Sept. 17, 2020
Preclusion Estoppel

Plaintiff Estopped as Nearby District Moves to Overtake
Plaintiff Estopped as Nearby District Moves to Overtake Abed Ismail, Unsplash

Judge Noreika had a rare holding estopping a plaintiff from asserting the lone patent-in-suit patent due to collateral estoppel after trial.

The Court held a five-day bench trial in Biogen Int'l GmbH v. Amneal Pharms. LLC, C.A. No 17-823-MN in December 2019, dealing with a host on invalidity issues, including obviousness, enablement, and written description. The parties completed post-trial briefing in March 2020, and and a final opinion was thus expected in the not-too-distant future.

Unfortunately for Biogen, they also sued a different defendant, Mylan, in the Northern District of West Virginia on the same patent. That case went to trial in February 2020, on the sole …

View
Newer
Older

Archive