Alsup Rips 'Obstinate' Attys, Patent 'BS' In Finjan-Juniper War
By Hannah Albarazi
Law360 (May 9, 2019, 8:21 PM EDT) -- U.S. District Judge William Alsup threw up his hands Thursday at cybersecurity firms Finjan and Juniper Networks as they continued battling it out following December's "showdown" trial over malware detection technology, calling their attorneys "obstinate" and saying he's tired of "all the BS that goes on" in patent litigation.
Judge Alsup, saying he's eager to stop hearing patent cases altogether, told Juniper and Finjan to prepare for another showdown trial in October to settle remaining issues in their patent dispute, telling counsel they would get a to-be-determined set amount of time to argue in favor of their best points and against the other side's weakest points.
Judge Alsup's innovative showdown trials are designed to save time, a precious resource in the Northern District of California, a court with the country's 13th-highest caseload.
Then the case "will be over, O-V-E-R, and it will be the Federal Circuit's problem," Judge Alsup said at the hearing, which left him shaking his head and saying he felt that one side must be lying to him.
The judge said he's looking forward to being "eligible to stop taking these patent cases."
Finjan's counsel asked for the October trial to be pushed back due to a scheduling conflict, but Judge Alsup denied the request, saying instead that he wouldn't mind explaining to the jury himself that Finjan is too busy suing so many other companies around the country that it couldn't make it to the trial.
Finjan's counsel didn't continue to press the issue.
Finjan sued Juniper for patent infringement in 2017, and in December 2018, a California federal jury found Juniper didn't infringe Finjan's malware detection patent.
The main dispute at the December trial was how to define the word "database," as the term is used in claim 10 of the patent-in-suit. Juniper had argued its allegedly infringing products had an "interface," but no "database" as the court and the parties had agreed to define it. The jury ruled in Juniper's favor, and that ruling was backed by Judge Alsup.
But Finjan moved in March to set aside the verdict, saying Juniper had only recently provided documents that allegedly showed its Sky ATP program did in fact use a database as defined in the patent. Juniper had 10 months before trial to produce the documents, and the discovery search terms should have found them, the motion said.
Also in March, Juniper asked for sanctions against Finjan, accusing the company of lying, failing to support its own case and pushing "overreaching" theories, particularly about damages.
Just ahead of Thursday's hearing, Judge Alsup granted Juniper's motion for summary judgment that its firewalls do not infringe a Finjan patent and denied Finjan's motion for summary judgment that Juniper infringes another patent.
At the hearing, Judge Alsup heard both sides' arguments regarding Finjan's motion to set aside the December verdict.
Juniper said it didn't withhold evidence, but that Finjan wanted information about a database used by the Swiss malware analysis company Joe Sandbox, a third-party service that Juniper uses. Juniper told the judge that Joe Sandbox's source code is a "black box" to it and that Finjan could have reached out to the service directly or subpoenaed the company, but instead "they sat on their hands."
Judge Alsup then heard arguments regarding Juniper's motion to sanction Finjan for allegedly wasting its resources and driving up its costs. Finjan said there's nothing in its behavior that could be characterized as bad faith conduct or willful abuse of the judicial process.
Judge Alsup didn't issue orders on those motions Thursday.
The patents-in-suit are U.S. Patent Nos. 8,677,494 and 6,804,780.
Finjan is represented by Paul J. Andre, Lisa Kobialka, James Hannah and Kristopher Kastens of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP.
Juniper is represented by Jonathan S. Kagan, Rebecca Carson, Alan Heinrich, Josh Glucoft and Kevin Wang of Irell & Manella LLP.
The case is Finjan Inc. v. Juniper Network Inc., case number 3:17-cv-05659, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
--Additional reporting by Dani Kass and Mike LaSusa. Editing by Breda Lund.
