Friends and Foes

March 4, 2011

Businesses sued for patent infringement in multi–defendant cases can find themselves surrounded by their enemies. On the one hand, there is no love lost with the plaintiff that has named you as a defendant. On the other hand, it is increasingly common to find yourself in a joint defense group with a handful of your nearest and dearest business competitors—the very businesses you’re fighting with in the market on a daily basis. If the suit touches on the inner workings of your business—your retail website, for example—you may be more worried about what your co–defendants may learn about your business than what the plaintiff might do with your source code.

In a brief, but refreshing, order, a federal district court in Wisconsin has proved that judges do pay attention to business realities in managing cases. In denying a motion by the plaintiff patent–owner to consolidate two cases under the same patents against two business competitors, the Court wrote: “More important, defendants are competitors in the hard disk drive industry. They do not want to cooperate in discovery or claims construction because each has its own interests to protect and presumably, its own litigation strategy. I see no reason to put defendants in a position in which they might be forced to disclose sensitive information to each other, even if doing so would save some time for the court.”

From IP wise