Well, I'm no lawyer but here's my take on today's PACER.
Section 6(g) of the Amended Scheduling Order relates to shifting the vendor cost for e-discovery from the defendants to EDIG. This scheduling order does not require EDIG to pay for all e-discovery, only the outside vendor costs. Defendants will still have to pay for all internal costs. Perhaps this will motivate DM to keep e-discovery limited in scope in order to keep costs down. DM believes this ruling is contrary to the law so there might be appeal grounds here.
Section 8(b)(3) of the Amended Scheduling Order relates to the number of hours each party has to depose the attorneys that prosecuted the original patents. EDIG wants 14 hours per attorney and the defendants want only 7 hours per.
Section 8(b)(5) of the Amended Scheduling Order relates to the number of hours each party has to depose third parties that aren’t named inventors of the patents. The parties agree that EDIG can have 70 total hours. However, the parties disagreed on how much time the defendants can have. EDIG proposed 100 total hours to be split according to agreement by the defendants. Defendants proposed 70 hours to be split according to agreement by the defendants and another 35 hours for each Defendant Group (i.e., Canon, Inc. and Canon USA, Inc. are a group).
What’s confusing is that the court denied EDIG’s entire motion (Doc 346), even though both parties agree that Section 8(b)(3) and 8(b)(5) needs to be clarified because both parties’ proposals are still in the Scheduling Order (see defendants motion Doc 357, page 8, para III). So neither party knows which will be followed with regard to the number of deposition hours.
