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)
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
Disclaimer: Justia Dockets & Filings provides public litigation records from the federal appellate and district courts. These filings and docket sheets should not be considered findings of fact or liability, nor do they necessarily reflect the view of Justia.
Why Is My Information Online?