Yes, real jurors would not be dressed like this. You'll have to use your imagination.AI-Generated, displayed with permission
I think most attorneys admire counsel who can think outside-the-box and push the law forward.
I still remember the original, magistrate-judge-level oral argument in TC Heartland, where the Court asked counsel "if your argument is correct . . . there's really only two venues in which the suit can go forward, am I right?" and counsel answered with the oral argument equivalent of "yup"—even though that outcome was directly contrary to controlling Federal Circuit precedent and how everyone had done things for decades.
Then they appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, and changed the law for everybody. Mic …
ChatGPT's images are getting pretty good. But this DOES NOT show Judge Hall, the attorneys, a real courtroom, or anything that actually happened. Please don't sue us.AI-Generated, displayed with permission
Well this is a new one. In Apple Inc. v. Masimo Corp., C.A. No. 22-1377-JLH (D. Del.), the parties dispute whether the patentee, Apple, has a right to a jury trial. That hinges on whether Apple is seeking damages—if it can only get an injunction, it has no right to a jury trial. Id., D.I. 745 at 5.
The Court found that Apple had, in fact, asked for a total of $250 in damages for infringement of four design patents and five utility patents, and that it was therefore entitled to a jury trial. That's two-hundred and fifty dollars—you're not missing any zeros or a "k" afterwards.
(By my math, assuming at least five attorneys and two paralegals are involved, I'd guess that Apple's total damages figure is equal to the cost of about four minutes of trial time by Apple's trial team, or less. It's probably less.)
Apparently, Apple's damages figure results from the fact that $250 is the statutory minimum damages for infringement of a design patent under 35 USC § 289. According to the Court, Apple's experts testified that the $250 statutory minimum for the design patents under § 289 also constituted the entire damages award for the utility patents under § 284. Id., D.I. 745 at 4-5 n.1. Apple also wants the Court to treble that to $750. Id.
But Masimo really doesn't want a jury trial here. It pushed hard for a bench trial, to the point where its counsel apparently brought $900 in cash to court and ...
We don't often write about claim construction opinions, because they can be very fact-specific. But Judge Hall's opinion yesterday in Apple Inc. v. Masimo Corporation, C.A. No. 22-1377-JLH (D. Del.) included some generally applicable points worth noting.
Sometimes a Reservation of Rights Actually Works
There's a reason we've all seen countless discovery documents, disclosures, expert reports, and briefs that are larded up with endless reservations of rights: sometimes they work!
This is one of those times. The patentee (Apple) had filed a response to invalidity contentions regarding a design patent in an IPR. In it, Apple described the scope of its patent, but included a reservation stating that it wasn't taking claim …
Earlier this year Judge Hall bifurcated the upcoming patent trial in Apple Inc. v. Masimo Corporation, C.A. No. 22-1377-JLH (D. Del.), keeping Apple's patent claims, the related invalidity and unenforceability defenses, and a portion of a Walker Process anti-trust counterclaim—but moving other claims to a later trial:
ORAL ORDER: Having held a case management conference on March 20, 2024, . . . IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that a 5-day jury trial is scheduled beginning October 21, 2024, with a pretrial conference scheduled for October 4, 2024 at 11:00 AM in courtroom 6D. The remaining claims and defenses in C.A. No. 22-1377 and C.A. No. 22-1378 shall be joined and/or bifurcated for trial such …
Yesterday, the Court dismissed a case where the plaintiff failed to list a related case involving one of the same patents in the civil cover sheet (one of several documents required for a new case). Witricity Corp. v. Ideanomics, Inc., C.A. No. 24-895-JLH, D.I. 15 (D. Del. Aug. 22, 2024).
The first case was assigned to visiting Judge Goldberg, who had stayed it. When the plaintiff filed the second case, it did not list the first case in the cover sheet, and the Court randomly assigned the second case to Judge Hall.
The defendant in the second case smartly informed the Court of the issue by filing a short "Notice Regarding Related Case" …
It's hornbook law that demonstratives are not evidence. Nevertheless, you'll sometimes see parties file some or all of them on the docket, if for no other reason than to explain a portion of the transcript where an expert is otherwise gesturing vaguely at a powerpoint.
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Unfortunately, there's no rule squarely addressing when it is appropriate to lodge these demonstratives with the Court. Fortunately, Judge Hall gave us all a bit of guidance last week in Ferring Pharms. Inc. v. Finch Therapeutics Group, Inc., C.A. No. 21-1694-JLH, D.I. 494 (D. Del. Aug. 28, 2024).
In that case, both parties filed their trial demonstrative a few weeks after the verdict (via notices of lodging). Just …
We'd all like to win the war in one decisive strike. Just have a trial by stone and knock the whole thing out without needing to go to the time and expense of a trial . . . by law.
(Eds. note—has nobody else seen The Dark Crystal? I thought this was a universal reference, but it appears to be just another exhibit in the case for my being quite old)
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Where was I? Anyway.
It's always tempting to take a big swing at summary judgment on validity or infringement in the hopes of knocking out the whole case. This urge, however, must be tempered by the knowledge that these big motions are harder to win. With limited pages and various judicial policies effectively limiting the number of SJ motions that can be brought, a more winnable motion on a small issue is often a good choice.
But an issue can be too small.
That was the lesson of Northwestern Univ. v. Universal Robots A/S, C.A. No. 21-149-JLH, D.I. 327 (D. Del. Aug. 28, 2024). The defendant filed a couple big SJ motions on 101 and noninfringement, but also moved for ...
There's a patent trial starting on Monday in Ferring Pharmaceuticals Inc. v. Finch Therapeutics Group, Inc., C.A. No. 21-1694-JLH (D. Del.), and filings are flying back and forth across the docket this week. The Court's order on motions in limine included this line, which piqued my interest:
To say that the Court is troubled by the occurrences to date would be an extreme understatement.
What was so troubling? It's tough to decipher exactly what is going on from the docket, which is fragmented and redacted. But it has to do with the parties' actions related to an inventor of certain of the asserted patents.
In the post, we note that certain kinds of stipulations are kinda iffy, in that "the parties can file a stipulation [about the issue] but the Court may deny or modify it, or the stipulation may have unexpected consequences." One of those categories is requests to move the trial date.
We got a good example of that this week in Rotolight Limited v. Videndum PLC, C.A. No. 22-0098-JLH, D.I. 119 (D. Del. July 8, 2024). The parties tried to stipulate to move the trial date back by …
Given how easy it is to seal information on the docket in Delaware, parties often don't think too much about the fact that they are going to discuss confidential information at a hearing, and may not want to interrupt the process to seek to seal the courtroom. And parties rarely seek to seal teleconferences, if only the parties are on.
But recent orders have made clear that if you may need to later seek to seal the transcript of a teleconference, hearing, or trial, the only safe thing to do is to request to seal the proceeding. This is true even if you are certain that only the parties are on the line.
This blog is for general informational purposes. It is not an offer to perform legal services, and should not be considered a substitute for legal advice. Nothing in this blog should be construed as forming an attorney-client relationship. If you have legal questions, please consult counsel in your jurisdiction.
