Digital Reg of Texas, LLC v. Adobe Systems Inc., Case No. C 12-1971 CW (Judge Wilken)

"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?!" – Pink Floyd, Another Brick in the Wall.

The same idea applies in patent litigation – you can't ask for extra pages if you don't follow the Court's directive.  Last week, Judge Wilken denied Adobe Systems Inc.'s administrative motion for an extension of page limits for its reply brief because it, along with the other parties to the case, neglected to follow Judge Wilken's formatting orders.

At the case management conference, Judge Wilken set a "four-brief format for the parties to submit combined claim construction and summary judgment briefs." However, plaintiff Digital Reg of Texas, LLC filed a single claim construction brief, to which all of the defendants replied with separate briefs responding to Digital Reg's claim construction and raising summary judgment issues. Then, Digital Reg filed three separate briefs, responding to the defendants' briefs.  Adobe moved for a page-limit extension for its reply and Judge Wilken put her foot down.  She not only denied Adobe's motion, she ordered all the parties to re-file consolidated briefs.  Further, she forbade any of the parties from raising new issues, ordering that the consolidated briefs be a summary of what had already been filed.  She explained that while the defendants may have different arguments or may deal with different claims or patents-in-suit, there were certain aspects of the briefs that could be consolidated so that she would not have to read the same thing six times.  She said the defendants could at least write a single statement of facts and law, and then have separate sections for the parties to address specific claims or arguments.

The lesson – don't disregard judges' orders for how they want to receive briefs, especially if you plan on asking for leeway with the local rules.

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