New status report in T-Mobile case hit the docket yesterday.
For those new or unfamiliar with patent cases, this is fairly typical of strategy by plaintiff & defendants. Courts ask the parties to “meet and confer” on reducing asserted claims for infringement & prior art references to help keep cases manageable. The plaintiffs always push for the broadest number of claims & defendants hope for the least. In this case T-Mobile believes they can prove their case for non-infringement if it goes to trial by only asserting 1 prior art reference.
———————————
VOIP-PAL.COM, INC., Plaintiff,
v.
T-MOBILE USA, INC., et al.,
Defendants.
Case No. 6:21-cv-674-ADA
JOINT REPORT ON MEET-AND-CONFER
The parties respectfully submit this joint report on their discussions regarding narrowing the number of asserted claims and prior art references to triable limits. Counsel for the parties exchanged e-mail correspondence beginning on May 4, 2023, and continued their discussions through correspondence after that. On May 12, 2023, the Court indicated that it “anticipates giving the parties 11 hours of trial time per side, exclusive of 30 minutes of openings and 30 minutes of closing per side.”
Plaintiff’s Position: Plaintiff proposes “narrowing the number of asserted claims in the T- Mobile case to 10 provided that T-Mobile narrows the total number of asserted prior art references (i.e., total anticipation references and/or obvious combinations) to 10. Though [its] understanding is that T- Mobile has already effectively narrowed the number of asserted prior references to 1.” VoIP-Pal believes that narrowing the number of asserted claims to 10 at this point is reasonable in light of the number of issues that remain in the case, which are not limited to the one prior art reference that Defendant intends to present at trial.
Defendant’s Position: Defendant has already narrowed its total number of prior art references (anticipation references and/or obviousness combinations) to 1 prior art system (the T-Mobile HotSpot @Home prior art system) and identified that 1 reference to Plaintiff. In light of the limited amount of trial time (where it cannot be seriously contemplated that 10 claims can be presented to the jury), and in light of its commitment to present only 1 prior art reference (its own prior art system) at trial, Plaintiff should narrow its number of asserted claims to 5. Plaintiff has refused this proposal.
