Leader Technologies Inc. v. Facebook Inc.

Filing 158

Official Transcript of Telephone Conference held on Friday, November 13, 2009 before Magistrate Judge Stark. Court Reporter Brian Gaffigan, Telephone (302) 573-6360. Transcript may be viewed at the court public terminal or purchased through the Court Reporter before the deadline for Release of Transcript Restriction. After that date, it may be obtained through PACER. Redaction Request due 12/4/2009. Redacted Transcript Deadline set for 12/14/2009. Release of Transcript Restriction set for 2/11/2010. (bpg)

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1 1 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT IN AND FOR THE DISTRICT OF DELAWARE 2 - - 3 LEADER TECHNOLOGIES, INC., a Delaware corporation, : : : : : : : : : 4 Plaintiff, 5 v. 6 7 FACEBOOK INC., a Delaware corporation, 8 CIVIL ACTION NO. 08-862 (JJF-LPS) Defendant. - - - 9 Wilmington, Delaware Friday, November 13, 2009 at 9:39 a.m. TELEPHONE CONFERENCE 10 11 - - 12 BEFORE: HONORABLE LEONARD P. STARK, U.S. MAGISTRATE JUDGE 13 - - 14 APPEARANCES: 15 16 17 18 19 POTTER ANDERSON & CORROON, LLP BY: PHILIP A. ROVNER, ESQ. and COOLEY GODWARD KRONISH, LLP BY: HEIDI L. KEEFE, ESQ., and JEFFREY NORBERG, ESQ. (Palo Alto, California) 20 Counsel for Leader Technologies, Inc. 21 22 BLANK ROME, LLP BY: STEVEN L. CAPONI, ESQ. 23 and 24 25 Brian P. Gaffigan Registered Merit Reporter 2 1 APPEARANCES: (Continued) 2 3 KING & SPALDING BY: PAUL J. ANDRE, ESQ., and LISA KOBIALKA, ESQ. (Redwood Shores, California) 4 5 Counsel for Facebook, Inc. 6 7 8 9 10 - oOo - 11 P R O C E E D I N G S 12 13 (REPORTER'S NOTE: conference was held in chambers, beginning at 9:39 a.m.) 14 15 16 The following telephone THE COURT: Judge Stark. Good morning, everyone. This is Who is there, please? MR. ROVNER: Good morning, Your Honor. This is 17 Phil Rovner from Potter Anderson on behalf of the plaintiff; 18 and with me are Paul Andre and Lisa Kobialka from King & 19 Spalding in California. 20 THE COURT: Okay. 21 MR. CAPONI: 22 Caponi from Blank Rome for Facebook. 23 is Heidi Keefe and Jeffrey Norberg from Cooley Godward. Good morning, Your Honor. Okay. Steve With me this morning 24 THE COURT: Good morning to all of you. 25 So this is, for the record, our case of Leader 3 1 Technologies Inc. versus Facebook. 2 08-862-JJF-LPS. 3 It's our Civil Action I do have a court reporter with me here today, 4 of course, and the purpose of today's call initially was to 5 resolve a discovery dispute brought to my attention by 6 Facebook. 7 that. 8 9 I have reviewed those letters and we will get to I did also receive, very recently, supplemental letters, one from Facebook and one from Leader with 10 allegations of potential spoliation of evidence. 11 allegation coming from Facebook and made on an urgent basis 12 with the request that we discuss it this morning. 13 gotten a response as well from Leader. 14 This is an I have I do want to start with the spoliation issue, 15 but before I hear from counsel, I do want to say I am 16 troubled that it appears that there was not any substantial 17 effort by Facebook to do more to meet and confer on this 18 issue with Leader's counsel prior to writing a letter that 19 is publicly available on our docket, making these allegations. 20 It certainly would have been preferable from my perspective 21 if there had been a further meet and confer and a further 22 effort to understand what may or may not have occurred 23 during the conversation that is recited in the letters. 24 25 I'm not, at this point, going to ask both parties to just take the floor and go further with their allegations 4 1 against, and their accusations against one another. 2 not going to spend a lot of time on this issue. 3 a couple of very direct questions, and I'll start with 4 Facebook. 5 We're I have just You can first respond to why there wasn't a 6 further effort to meet and confer. Also, I'd like a better 7 understanding as to how the information that you're seeking 8 could be likely to lead to admissible evidence, why therefore 9 it's even within the realm of discoverable. And, finally, 10 the only relief I would even begin to consider granting that 11 you have requested is your first bullet point: 12 some reason, you'd be provided with a list of the third 13 parties that Leader has contacted regarding the documents. 14 And I'm not inclined to provide you even that relief, but 15 I'll certainly hear an argument for why I should. 16 That, for So, very briefly, and I encourage both sides to 17 do your best to refrain from trying to inflame one another 18 any further than you already have, and let's see if we can 19 keep this a civil and professional discourse. 20 With that, I will turn it over to Facebook. 21 MS. KEEFE: 22 23 Absolutely. Thank you very much, Your Honor. With respect to the timing of the letter, Your 24 Honor, we only learned of this issue mid-to-late-day 25 Wednesday, and I took all of Wednesday to try to investigate 5 1 to find out exactly what had happened from the parties that 2 were involved, from my associate who received the phone 3 call, from Shearman & Sterling. 4 Sterling myself to try to find out a little bit more about 5 what happened and to confirm everything that was happening. 6 I then proceeded to do some research to try to find out 7 exactly how this would affect our case. 8 I then contacted Shearman & Immediately the following morning, at the 9 beginning of business, at the opening of business, I sent a 10 letter to Mr. Andre explaining my problems and informing him 11 that I actually felt the need to go to the Court regarding 12 this issue. 13 phone call, given the urgent nature of this and given the 14 seriousness of what I was bringing up. I heard nothing. I would have expected a 15 I also knew that we had this hearing on Friday 16 morning and wanted to be able to address this issue during 17 this hearing, since it was already set between the parties 18 with Your Honor. 19 I waited to go to the Court until the very end of the day on 20 Thursday, that King & Spalding would comment that I had not 21 given them a chance to respond to the Court, so I filed my 22 letter with the Court, making sure that there was ample time 23 for them to respond to the Court, to that letter, and that 24 was the course of events, and those were the timing that had 25 took place. I was going to the Court. I knew that if 6 1 If I should have filed the letter under seal, I 2 admit, Your Honor, that that was simply something that 3 didn't come to mind, and perhaps I should have done so, and 4 for that I apologize; but the urgent nature of this and the 5 possibility that the documents have been or were being 6 actively destroyed at this moment caused me to come to the 7 Court as quickly as I did. 8 9 Now, with respect to why these documents are relevant, all of these documents, everything that we're 10 talking about here -- if we just take one step back, all of 11 these documents are documents between Leader Technologies 12 and/or his counsel and third parties from who they're 13 seeking funding for a lawsuit. 14 that is not a privilege, but we can put that issue aside for 15 a moment. 16 Judge Farnan has indicated Mr. Andre and King & Spalding have taken the 17 position that all of those documents have some form of 18 privilege because all of those conversations were done in 19 anticipation of litigation. 20 glean from the documents that have been produced, all of 21 those documents had something to do with this case. 22 had to do with prior art that the parties had found and 23 indicated that they were discussing with each other. 24 had investigations concerning allegations of infringement, 25 concerning possible damages, all things which are highly From what we've been able to They They 7 1 relevant to this case, to what people thought about the 2 patent, to documents that had been requested, all documents 3 regarding prior art, regarding this litigation, regarding 4 the decision to file this lawsuit, investigations done 5 before the lawsuit, and all were done in anticipation of 6 litigation. 7 If, as Leader has done throughout this case, 8 they're claiming a privilege as to these documents, under 9 the Rambus versus Micron case, all of those documents needed 10 to be preserved. 11 what has been confirmed by Mr. Andre in his letter is that 12 rather than a contract to preserve those documents, there 13 seems to be a nondisclosure agreement which, according to 14 Mr. Segal, he understood mandated their destruction. 15 the word that got me very nervous and made me come to Your 16 Honor was that word "destruction," and that was the word 17 Mr. Segal informed me about. 18 Mr. Segal twice. 19 then before I sent the letter to Your Honor, I actually read 20 the entire letter to Mr. Segal to confirm that it actually 21 accurately represented what he had heard and what he had 22 said to me. 23 Instead, what we learned on Wednesday, and I confirmed that word with I called him to ask him about it. THE COURT: And And And you are saying, in your view, 24 it would be unlawful for parties to have a contractual 25 nondisclosure agreement that requires the destruction of 8 1 documents that are created as part of a request to raise 2 funds to pursue litigation? 3 MS. KEEFE: Yes, Your Honor, I am. That is 4 borne out by the fact that Mr. Andre and in all of LTI's 5 correspondence, they had claimed privilege to these documents, 6 based on the fact that all those documents were in anticipation 7 of litigation. 8 the Court held, this Court, Judge Robinson, held that 9 because the document retention policy -- in that case, it In the Rambus versus Micron case, specifically, 10 was a retention policy; here, it would be the nondisclosure 11 agreement -- was discussed and adopted within the context of 12 litigation strategy, therefore, Rambus, according to the 13 Court, should have known that a general implementation of 14 the policy was inappropriate because the documents destroyed 15 would become material at some point in the future. 16 And I believe, given the fact that they're 17 claiming privilege to these documents based on the fact 18 that all of this correspondence was in anticipation of 19 litigation, would have yielded a duty to preserve those 20 documents. 21 Now, even if we take the assumption that King & 22 Spalding wasn't involved at that stage of this litigation, 23 we know they weren't involved in all of -- you know, 24 throughout all of the time that Leader was talking about, 25 the minute that King & Spalding became aware of NDAs which 9 1 would have mandated destruction of documents, knowing that 2 they were in the case, they should have contacted those 3 third parties to remind them of their obligation to preserve 4 the documents in anticipation of litigation and instead. 5 What I heard from Mr. Segal at Shearman & 6 Sterling was that he was reminded of the NDAs obligation 7 to destroy the documents, not to tell his client of his 8 obligation to preserve the document. 9 such concern is that we actually have documents, contrary 10 to the holding in Rambus, which implement a policy wherein 11 documents created in anticipation of litigation were to be 12 destroyed. 13 THE COURT: That is what gave us And do you have the list of all 14 of the third parties? 15 asking for in that first bullet point. 16 information do you already have? 17 MS. KEEFE: Let's turn to the relief you are How much of that I honestly don't know, Your Honor. 18 We have some information. We subpoenaed a number of third 19 parties based on the limited e-mails that we did receive 20 indicating, you know, correspondence was sent between 21 Mr. McKibben, or someone else at Leader and a funding 22 company, or someone other third party. 23 those that were identified in those e-mails, we have 24 subpoenaed their information and are receiving resistance on 25 many levels, but that is okay. With respect to 10 1 I don't know how many people are out there that 2 I don't know about. 3 this supposed NDA existed until Mr. Segal called. 4 in Mr. Andre's letter, he says that it does exist but that 5 he hasn't produced it yet, and he claims that it is not 6 responsive, even though there was a document request back in 7 February of this year asking for all documents regarding 8 this litigation or decisions to file this lawsuit, things of 9 that nature. 10 11 For example, I didn't even know that THE COURT: All right. And now, Let me hear from Mr. Andre at this point, please. 12 MR. ANDRE: Your Honor, the NDAs that counsel 13 is referring to are not regarding this litigation, and they 14 obviously are not the least bit relevant. 15 they're seeking, there is no way they will ever get 16 admissible evidence for any of these documents. 17 The documents When I had my call with Mr. Segal, I had these 18 calls dozens and dozens of times with third parties. 19 a professional courtesy to let them know about this NDA 20 because he asked about it. 21 parties would probably return all copies of confidential 22 information in its possession; and that's what I told 23 Mr. Segal. 24 25 It was The NDA actually says the I also told him that there is a provision in there that said if they created additional documents based 11 1 on confidential information, then those would be destroyed. 2 This is standard language in every NDA. 3 this type of language in NDAs, NDAs would not be useful at 4 all. 5 attorney-client privilege, not work product, and that is not 6 anticipation of litigation, it's a straight attorney-client 7 privilege. Any type of privilege that would be claimed would be 8 9 If you cannot have That being said, what I informed Mr. Segal of, I think it's pretty clear in the letter, was nothing out of 10 the ordinary. 11 in her letter would not warrant her leaping to the type of 12 conclusion that she has come up with. 13 Even what Ms. Keefe accused me of or accused I don't have much more to add than what is in 14 the letter. 15 what went down here; and I think the unfortunate aspect was 16 Ms. Keefe did not pick up her phone and give me a call. 17 was in a meeting yesterday morning, and I got the letter to 18 the Court actually before I got Ms. Keefe's letter. 19 20 21 I think that the facts are pretty clear as to I I think that is all I have to say about that, unless Your Honor should have any specific questions. THE COURT: Why should I not order you to turn 22 over the NDA now just to get that out of the way and so 23 there is no further dispute as to what it actually says? 24 25 MR. ANDRE: It's our responsibility to do the document request, Your Honor, but if Your Honor wants us to 12 1 produce the NDAs, we do have provisions in here that these 2 were supposed to be to remain confidential, but we can put 3 that as a privilege -- I mean as a confidentiality 4 designation and produce it. 5 6 THE COURT: Right. We have a protective order in this case; right? 7 MR. ANDRE: Exactly. So I don't mind producing 8 the NDA. They put in document requests as of October 21st, 9 our response is due November 20th, where they specifically 10 ask for these type of NDAs. 11 relevant to this case. 12 get into evidence. 13 we'll produce it. 14 I don't think this is remotely There is no possible way this will But if it will make this issue go away, THE COURT: And what about, why should I not 15 make you disclose to Facebook a list of every third party 16 that you have contacted regarding documents related to this 17 lawsuit? 18 MR. ANDRE: There is no reason to do so, Your 19 Honor. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever. The fact 20 that when the subpoenas went out, when they subpoenaed all 21 these relevant documents, many of the individuals they 22 subpoenaed were, some were former employees of ours. Some 23 are actually current employees, part-time employees. One 24 is a member of our board. 25 companies, they contacted us and asked if we would represent And some of these financing 13 1 them and file their objections and produce the documents, if 2 they had any in their possession. 3 We agreed to do so. This is not anything that happens out of the 4 ordinary in the case. There is absolutely no basis for this 5 type of relief. 6 what was the conversation I had with Mr. Segal, Shearman & 7 Sterling. 8 conversation. 9 suggestion that they destroyed documents. The allegations in Ms. Keefe's letter are There is nothing improper about that type of 10 There is absolutely no implication or In fact, when he asked me, do you think there 11 would be many documents, I said I doubt there will be, 12 because your client has informed us that they had already 13 returned all the documents or destroyed them pursuant to the 14 NDA. 15 there would be much for you to review. So it was a professional courtesy. 16 I don't think And that was the extent of it. There is no 17 basis for giving Ms. Keefe and Facebook any relief at all 18 based on what has happened. 19 THE COURT: And what about the suggestion that 20 the NDA provision referencing a destruction obligation is 21 itself unlawful? 22 MR. ANDRE: I disagree with that completely, 23 Your Honor. 24 think that is a complete mischaracterization of the law. 25 I think that the law is contrary to that. I don't know what case Ms. Keefe is talking I 14 1 about. That was not addressed in her letter, so I'm not 2 sure what the case is, but I know that NDAs of this nature 3 are prevalent throughout industry. 4 in every single NDA I have ever seen. 5 any way unlawful, then they would cease to exist. 6 think that is a complete mischaracterization of the law. 7 8 THE COURT: All right. These are standard terms So if these were in So I I've heard enough on this dispute. 9 I am denying all of the relief that has been 10 requested by Facebook. 11 that have been made by Mr. Andre in his letter and this 12 morning. 13 something like our fifth or sixth call regarding discovery 14 disputes, that obviously counsel have had a problem getting 15 along and meeting their obligations to their clients and to 16 the Court. 17 judgment on occasion on both sides to too quickly assume bad 18 faith as the motive on the other side; and I believe that is 19 what happened here. 20 I'm satisfied by the representations I think, as is evident by the fact this is I think, unfortunately, there has been a rush to I'm satisfied that both parties acted in good 21 faith, but further meeting and conferring on this issue 22 would have allowed it to be resolved without reaching the 23 level it did and without requiring the Court's attention. 24 And I can only tell counsel that I've -- well, I haven't 25 been in this job for a long time. I have handled a lot of 15 1 discovery disputes and various parts of high stakes 2 litigation and intellectual property in other cases, and 3 somehow it seems counsel, in almost every case, find a way 4 to vigorously represent their clients but also to fulfill 5 their obligations to the Court and to one another as 6 members of the bar, to work cooperatively, to push a dispute 7 properly through the process; and, at times, it has seemed 8 this case is the exception, and I hope that things will 9 improve as we go forward. 10 So I'm denying the relief that is requested. 11 am going to order that Leader produce the nondisclosure 12 agreements, and to do that no later than five days from 13 I today. 14 I am not prepared at this point to make any 15 ruling on who is right as to whether provisions in those 16 agreements are, on their face, unlawful or not, but at least 17 by providing those documents to Facebook, Facebook can see 18 what the documents actually say. 19 to seek further relief, then I'm sure you will be able to 20 pursue your rights at that point. 21 And if there is a basis So that is enough on that issue. Let's turn now 22 to the original issue that was the basis for this call. I 23 don't want to spend a great deal of time on this one either, 24 but I will give each side a chance to briefly respond to 25 what they heard in the letters primarily; and since this is 16 1 Facebook's complaint, let me hear first from Facebook. 2 MS. KEEFE: Thank you very much, Your Honor. 3 Your Honor, this request regards the fact that 4 after Your Honor's deadline of October 15th for putting 5 in infringement contentions and after the deadline for 6 Facebook to serve written discovery requests in this case, 7 Leader supplemented its interrogatories to add three new 8 never before disclosed claims. 9 least facially dramatically different from all of the other One of those claims is at 10 claims that have ever been asserted in this case. 11 result of that dramatic difference, that particular claim 12 has not been subject to analysis or investigation by 13 Facebook. 14 this case, Facebook will need to be able to mount an 15 investigation, answer written discovery regarding that 16 claim. 17 phrases that appeared in no other claim that has ever been 18 previously asserted in this case, including, for example, 19 the words "ordering," "arrangement" and "traversing." 20 As a As a result, Facebook, if that claim stays in That claim is No. 17, and it involves words and Mr. Andre is correct that Facebook did put into 21 its ex parte request for reexamination claims that had not 22 been asserted, but those claims were only included because 23 they included virtually identical language to other claims 24 that had already been asserted or were dependent on an 25 independent claim that was already asserted. 17 1 2 THE COURT: reexamination? 3 4 MS. KEEFE: Claim 17 is not part of the reexamination. 5 6 So Claim 17 is not part of the THE COURT: And have you conducted a search for prior art relating to Claim 17? 7 MS. KEEFE: We just started that search. During 8 the process of meeting and conferring on this issue, these 9 claims were added on October 29th. We immediately started 10 the process of meeting and conferring. 11 Mr. Andre's assertion that everything I ever wanted to do 12 was stall the case, quite the opposite. 13 Mr. Andre was to remove these claims from the case to avoid 14 the need to extend discovery in this case. 15 I offered a compromise: To the contrary of My first request to That if Mr. Andre 16 wanted Dependent Claims 3 and 6 to be in the case, he could 17 leave those in because those were related to claims that we 18 had done investigations on, and he would just drop Claim 17 19 so that we could preserve the current calendar which has 20 claim construction beginning the very first week in 21 December. 22 At this point, we have begun our prior art 23 analysis but we are nowhere near finished; and we have not 24 had the opportunity to serve written discovery regarding 25 that claim. 18 1 THE COURT: All right. So why isn't it, though, 2 that Leader has until November 20th under my order to add a 3 new claim, including a new independent claim? 4 MS. KEEFE: It's our belief, Your Honor, the way 5 the entire process played out, that by October 15th, because 6 of Your Honor's order carving out contention interrogatories 7 regarding infringement, that those allegations were to have 8 been put in by the 15th. 9 As of the 15th of October, Leader, by its own 10 admission, had all of the documentation that it needs. 11 Nothing has changed since the 15th. 12 been propounded. 13 Leader hasn't even come back to, you know, look at the 14 source code again. 15 15th. 16 that contention interrogatory from the remainder of the 17 schedule so that the parties would know what claims were at 18 issue in this case so that discovery could be finalized and 19 so that we could go forward. No new information has No new information has been handed over. Nothing changed from the time of the We think that Your Honor's order actually carved out 20 THE COURT: Are you referring to the September 4th 22 MS. KEEFE: Yes, Your Honor. 23 THE COURT: Okay. MR. ANDRE: Your Honor, I think you are correct, 21 24 25 order? Let me hear from Mr. Andre, please. 19 1 the scheduling order permits us to supplement our contention 2 interrogatories up until November 20th. 3 That's what we did. The September 4th order talked about 4 supplementation of the claims, and we had to include the 5 source code modules. 6 was about. 7 to whether we could see the source code or not. 8 had to supplement our interrogatories with that source code 9 information. 10 That is what the September 4th order As you will recall, there was a large fight as And then we The fact of the matter is, is that we did that 11 supplementation; and Facebook was not happy with the 12 supplementation. 13 further. 14 unredacted in early October. 15 supplementation in October, we supplemented adding these 16 three additional claims that are based solely on the 17 confidential information that we received in September and 18 early October. 19 those claims that we could determine from the public 20 information that were being infringed. 21 additional claims we could not determine from the public 22 information, but we could determine from the confidential 23 source code and the documents that were produced in October. They kept pushing us to supplement They produced the most critical documents to us And we have, after the second The previous supplementation was based on These three 24 So we think we've supplemented in good faith 25 pursuant to the discovery order that was entered in this 20 1 case. We don't think there is any prejudice whatsoever 2 for the written discovery that Facebook has provided, has 3 not seen without certain claims. 4 discovery information about all the claims, and we will have 5 to supplement all those written interrogatories and produce 6 all documents related to these additional claims, just like 7 we did the previous claims. 8 They've asked general Then, I guess, lastly, if this is Facebook's 9 position there is no allowed supplementation, no additional 10 claims are allowed to be added, I think it would extremely 11 unfair, the fact they were able to identify an additional 12 35 or so odd additional references just last week. 13 supplementing their interrogatories, adding new claims of 14 invalidity. 15 their counterclaims to add in a claim of false marking. 16 I think it's a little disingenuous to say that adding three 17 claims in that are on the exact same subject matter -- and 18 Claim 17 just adds couple additional new terms, it's not 19 vastly different technology, obviously. 20 prejudice at all. 21 They're They're trying to even amend their complaint -- THE COURT: So There is no So the contention interrogatories 22 that you provided with respect to Claim 17, are they of the 23 same level of detail as what you provided for the others 24 that we've talked about previously and that you had to do by 25 October 15th? 21 1 MR. ANDRE: They are, Your Honor. They add 2 all the -- it's based purely on confidential information. 3 There was no public information we could base the claim of 4 infringement on, so it was based purely on our review of the 5 source code and their highly confidential documents that 6 were produced in late September and early October. 7 THE COURT: Are you planning any further 8 supplementation with respect to Claim 17 by the November 20th 9 deadline? 10 MR. ANDRE: Your Honor, they've asked us to 11 supplement once again the claims. It's really more of in 12 form, and that's part of their letter brief here, that they 13 want us to make sure that any of the source code modules we 14 listed in the accused instrumentality was included in the 15 claim charts as well, that there would be no discrepancy. 16 So we've agreed to supplement on that, in substance. 17 would be no additional supplementation of those claims other 18 than the supplementation that we'll be getting out later 19 today to Facebook based on their requests. There 20 THE COURT: All right. 21 MR. ANDRE: There will be no new source code 22 modules not previously identified -- 23 THE COURT: All right. 24 MR. ANDRE: -- or documentation. 25 THE COURT: Ms. Keefe. 22 1 MS. KEEFE: Your Honor -- 2 THE COURT: Yes, go ahead. 3 MS. KEEFE: I'm sorry, Your Honor. We actually 4 disagree that the disclosure with respect to Claim 17 is of 5 the same level of detail. 6 looks at Pages 27 and 28 of the interrogatory response where 7 the cells are containing the words, for example, that I am 8 the most concerned about, things like "traversing" the 9 different arrangements, you can see that there's actually no I think if Your Honor simply 10 detail there whatsoever. 11 language with a simple pointing to one source code module. 12 No explanation of how that source code module does it, what 13 any of those terms mean. 14 We're back to parroting claim It's just a mere parroting. The parroting here in Claim 17 looks more 15 like the type of facially insufficient analysis that we 16 originally complained about. 17 with respect to the old claim, Leader did actually give us 18 more detail, finally, and has given us a more detailed 19 limitation-by-limitation analysis; but that had not happened 20 with respect to Claim 17, and we think the document shows 21 that. 22 THE COURT: Now, I will admit fully that Well, I think that there was an 23 ambiguity in the various orders with respect to Leader's 24 obligations on supplementing contention interrogatories, and 25 this dispute falls right into that ambiguity. Whereas I 23 1 think it was reasonable for Facebook to understand that by 2 October 15th, they would have full and complete contention 3 interrogatories with respect to all of the claims that were 4 being asserted, I also think it was reasonable for Leader to 5 read the overriding date of November 20th as the deadline to 6 allow it to do as it has done here. 7 While I am hearing and sympathetic to Facebook's 8 suggestion that it may need relief from the accelerated 9 schedule here now that three new claims, including one 10 independent claim, Claim 17, have been added, I'm not yet 11 persuaded that additional time is going to be necessary. 12 I'm also not yet persuaded that I should strike the independent 13 claim, Claim 17. 14 I'm also aware that while today is November 13th, 15 it's not yet November 20th. 16 requested relief from Facebook today. 17 play out another week. 18 the sufficiency of the contention with respect to Claims 19 3, 6, and 17, but what I am holding is that no later than 20 November 20th, those contentions must be of the same level 21 of clarity and detail and comprehensiveness as those which 22 had been the subject of many conversations between us, that 23 is, with respect to the other claims that were asserted from 24 the beginning of the case. 25 So my ruling is I'm denying the I'm going to let this I'm not, at this point, assessing So, at this point, I see no basis for ordering 24 1 any further relief. 2 further dispute with respect to this issue, but I am mindful 3 of where both sides are coming from. 4 my goal to keep this case on track to the trial date, 5 which I think is next June, if events warrant, after the 6 November 20th deadline, providing some additional relief 7 with respect to the schedule or with respect to making this 8 case narrower, I will deal with that if, and when, those 9 disputes arise. 10 11 My hope is that there won't be any And keeping in mind I believe that is all the issues that are in front of me today. Is that correct, Ms. Keefe? 12 MS. KEEFE: I believe so, Your Honor. 13 THE COURT: Okay. 14 MR. ANDRE: Thank you, Your Honor. 15 THE COURT: Okay. 16 my ruling on the issues today. 17 Mr. Andre? That's all. This transcript will serve as Thank you very much. Good-bye. 18 (The attorneys respond, "Thank you, Your Honor.") 19 (Telephone conference ends at 10:13 a.m.) 20 21 22 23 24 25

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