Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Symantec Corporation et al.

Filing 628

MEMORANDUM ORDER regarding jury trial scheduled to commence on January 26, 2015. Signed by Judge Leonard P. Stark on 1/21/2015. (rpg)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF DELAWARE
INTELLECTUAL VENTURES I LLC,
Plaintiff,
C.A. No. 10-1067-LPS

V.

SYMANTEC CORPORATION,
Defendant.

MEMORANDUM ORDER
At Wilmington this 21st day of January, 2015, having reviewed the parties' letters
relating to two issues that arose at the pretrial conference (D.I. 621; D.I. 622; D.I. 624; D.I. 625),

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that:
1.

The two newly-accused products will not be the subject of the trial beginning next

week. However, the Court's decision to exclude these products from the forthcoming trial is
without prejudice to IV's ability to seek reliefrelated to them through an appropriate post-trial
proceeding in this case or by filing a new suit. It is also without prejudice to any rights Symantec
has to defend against liability or damages with respect to these two products.
2.

Symantec will not be permitted to present its false marking "defense" at the

forthcoming trial. See 35 U.S.C. § 287. With respect to the '050 and '610 patents, IV has, at all
pertinent times, asserted only method claims, and the marking requirement does not apply to
method claims. See Crown Packaging Tech., Inc. v. Rexam Beverage Can Co., 559 F.3d 1308,
1316 (Fed. Cir. 2009) ("35 U.S.C. § 287(a) d[oes] not apply where the patentee only asserted the
method claims of a patent which included both method and apparatus claims.") (citing Hanson v.

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Alpine Valley Ski Area, Inc., 718 F.2d 1075, 1082-83 (Fed. Cir. 1983)). At Symantec's (and its
then co-defendants') request, the Court ordered IV to elect no more than twenty asserted claims,
which IV complied with on April 6, 2012. (D.I. 162 at 20-26, 31-32; D.I. 197) From that day
forward (including throughout the claim construction and summary judgment proceedings), IV
has not asserted any apparatus claims of either the '050 or '610 patents against Symantec, and in
particular IV never pressed for a judgment of liability against Symantec on any such claim.
With respect to the remaining patent-in-suit, the '142 patent, the Court finds, as an
exercise of its discretion and as proper case management, that it would be unfairly prejudicial to
IV to allow Symantec, at nearly the final moment before trial (i.e., listing it as a contested issue
in the proposed pretrial order), to put IV in a position in which it must prove that it (or its
predecessors and/or licensees) marked embodiments of the '142 patent. Symantec mistakenly or
misleadingly identified failure to mark as its "Fifth Affirmative Defense" in its Answer. (D.1. 23
at 10) (emphasis added). 1 When IV thereafter served an interrogatory seeking "all factual and
legal bases for each affirmative defense asserted in Your Answer" (D.1. 622 Ex. A at 9),
Symantec said nothing about § 287, and continued to remain silent about § 287 in its
supplemental responses to interrogatories on the last day of discovery (D.I. 622 Ex. C).
Symantec did not provide expert discovery on failure to mark and did not propose a jury
instruction on false marking at the time the parties exchanged jury instruction proposals. All of
this suggests to the Court that Symantec failed to give IV adequate, meaningful notice that it
contested marking. Under the totality of circumstances (which, the Court recognizes, includes

1

Marking is a limitation on damages, not an affirmative defense. See Motorola, Inc. v.
United States, 729 F.2d 765, 770 (Fed. Cir. 1984) ("[T]he marking and notice statute cannot be
interpreted as a patent defense.").
2

amongst the mass of discovery that Symantec did seek deposition testimony and third-party
discovery relating to marking), the Court finds that Symantec waived and/or abandoned its right
to contest marking at the forthcoming trial.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

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