Delaware Patent Litigation Report : Delaware Intellectual Property Lawyer & Attorney : Morris James Law Firm : Delaware Patent Litigation Report

The Magistrate resolves certain discovery disputes.  Defendants’ request for documents relating to assignments within the patentee’s IP department of each case or project numbers to which department members were assigned as well as applications within which each project number was assigned for a period of three years is denied with leave to explore through deposition whether it was common to have divided responsibility for U.S. patent prosecution from responsibility for prosecution of related patents in other jurisdictions.  The court finds the burden of production, including translation and privilege review outweighs the minimal marginal relevance.  In addition, plaintiff has adequately explained the basis for “disassembling” documents produced, and is in the process of “reassembling” files in the manner in which they were kept.  Finally, at this time there is no basis to provide relief with respect to a privilege issue relating to the U.S. duty of disclosure.