As you appreciate in Doc 379 defendants have requested different hours for testimony

This is always significant headache in multi defendants cases.

Following article will summarizes this issue.

From Doc 379

Prioritization of issues in discovery when discovery limitations are applied to defendants as a group

In addition to allocation of time in Markman hearing and briefing, many courts involving multiple defendants set discovery limitations dealing with various issues in the case. Those limitations may include the number of interrogatories, the amount of time that each party may take for depositions, the amount of time that the defendants jointly have to depose certain individuals in the case, including the inventors in a Rule 30(b)(6) deposition of the plaintiff, the amount of time each party may take depositions of common experts, and other provisions that plaintiffs will request to try to avoid defendants ganging up on the plaintiff. For example, in a lawsuit in which a patentee has asserted infringement against five defendants, each of the defendants ordinarily might want to depose the inventors. Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, each defendant ordinarily has the right to take a seven-hour deposition of each inventor. Supposing there are three inventors in the case, if each defendant used all of the available time permitted under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, it could take 21 hours to depose the inventors. If each of the five defendants took that time, inventor depositions alone would last up to 105 hours. Further, if each of the five defendants took seven hours to depose every witness in the case, the number of deposition hours could mushroom uncontrollably.

As a result, it is very common in multiple defendant cases for the court to set some limitation on the number of total hours of deposition, either for each defendant group or for all defendants collectively, or a combination thereof. For example, limitations may be set related to the number of hours each inventor may be required to sit for deposition. Instead of requiring each inventor to sit for seven hours of deposition for each of the five defendants, a compromise may be negotiated such that each inventor only has to sit for perhaps some smaller number of hours.

When such limitations are put in place, that obviously places restrictions on the amount of time that the defendants may each pursue different avenues of discovery. This is particularly true when the amount of time allotted for depositions is imposed on the defendants as a group, rather than individually. Defendants might be limited in the number of hours of depositions they can expend on issues that are individual to them or to a subset of the defendants. As a result, this may at some point restrict their ability to fully pursue all of the discovery that they would pursue, in comparison to a litigation in which they are the only defendant.

As a result of these kinds of restrictions on discovery in multiple defendant lawsuits, defendants must clearly prioritize what issues are important to them and push amongst the defendant group to have those issues addressed. This results in issues that ordinarily might be pursued having to take a backseat so that all the defendants have an opportunity to pursue key issues important to them in the lawsuit.