ARCHIVED CONTENT
You are viewing ARCHIVED CONTENT released online between 1 April 2010 and 24 August 2018 or content that has been selectively archived and is no longer active. Content in this archive is NOT UPDATED, and links may not function.Extract from article by Monte Cooper and Lillian Mao
Here is a riddle for you: when can an interest in reducing cost and burden justify broader discovery? The answer: when documents previously produced in a related case are at issue. That’s what Magistrate Judge Beeler concluded in Richtek Technology Corp. v. uPI Semiconductor Corp., in ruling that documents produced in an ITC investigation would be treated as if produced in the district court patent case, while simultaneously rejecting defendant uPI’s request to carve out trade secret discovery and discovery about non-accused products.
Fundamentally, Magistrate Judge Beeler found that uPI’s proposed process to carve out certain documents would be too burdensome on both the parties and the court, and thus contrary to the principal of proportionality in FRCP 26.