Post-trial evidentiary objections are overruled
Farnan J. Court rules on certain evidentiary issues raised by both parties during bench trial and denies all objections.
The Court considers certain evidentiary issues raised by the parties during a bench trial. Plaintiffs’ contention that defendants should be barred from contesting infringement with respect to certain claims and from raising certain arguments because they did not timely disclose their infringement and validity contentions in response to interrogatories and waited until the Pretrial Order to raise them is overruled. The Court concludes that defendants provided sufficient notice to comply with their Rule 26(e) obligations both in their discovery responses as well as in other documents filed before the close of discovery. Defendants’ objections to the admission of evidence concerning objective indicia of nonobviousness on the basis that such evidence is irrelevant and therefore should be excluded is overruled. The Court permits the admission of evidence concerning secondary indicia of nonobviousness. The contention that certain plaintiffs' expert testimony should be excluded because it exceeded the scope of the expert report is overruled as the Court determines that the expert report was sufficient to provide defendants with notice of the testimony at issue. Finally, defendants contend that the terminal disclaimer filed by the plaintiffs should be excluded because plaintiffs failed to raise this defense to invalidity in the Pretrial Order is similarly overruled. While the plaintiffs’ terminal disclaimer was not filed pretrial, the Pretrial Order outlines the legal issues relevant to any potential filing of a terminal disclaimer and that the timeliness issue is more appropriately addressed in the context of the disclaimer’s effectiveness rather than its admissibility.
A copy of the full opinion is available here.
