Some interesting weekend reading. On 7 Mar 2008 a teleconference was held in the ITC case. I don’t remember reading about it before, and thought that some of the comments were still pertinent, especially those about high level negotiations.
In Feb 2008 Nokia asked IDCC, to produce witnesses who could testify about the TDD agreement. They had questions covering 28 topics. IDCC responded by providing witnesses, who could testify regarding six of the 28 topics. IDCC then objected to all of Nokia's remaining 22 topics and refused to provide any further witnesses. IDCC felt that Nokia’s TDD defense was meritless and that absolved them of their obligation to provide witnesses in response to the request. Nokia wanted the ALJ to compell IDCC to provide the witnesses.
During the discussion (pages 20-25), the ALJ appeared to be highly critical of Nokia’s delay in making the request near the end of the discovery period. For example (page 20):
“Judge LUCKERN: Why did you wait until February to start pursuing this? MR. RICHARDSON: Well, Your Honor, I don’t have a good answer for why it was in February. I know that -- JUDGE LUCKERN: Well, you‘ve got enough lawyers there. I don’t expect you don’t have a good answer. You have a good answer in this letter you sent in to me. So, maybe, you ought to get better lawyers.”
The conclusion was that the two parties should try to work it out, with possibly a reduced scope . I don’t know what happened, but it may have been overtaken by subsequent events.
After discussing the discovery dispute, the ALJ brought up the subject about his possible ordering and participation in a pre-hearing settlement conference. However the conclusion was that it probably wouldn’t be worthwhile. For example here are a couple of the ALJ’s comments:
“But, I have sort of come to the conclusion this should be absolutely hopeless to try to get this case settled at all. It would just be a waste of everybody‘s time bringing people down here. I don’t see how it could ever be settled, especially in view of this license agreement.” (page 38)
“ But, I just get the feeling that in this case, it seems to be so litigious and the issues that are involved here, that, to me, it may be a waste of time to put out such an order to anybody.” (page 43)
Although the idea of a pre-hearing settlement conference didn’t go over too well, during the discussion there were a couple of comments that I thought were very interesting. While the lawyers are busy fighting against each other, apparently high level negotiations have been going on between senior executives of the companies without the outside litigation lawyers being involved. So it looks like IDCC’s statement about serious negotiations was based on ongoing negotiations. For example:
IDCC’s lawyer “MR. BRITTINGHAM: I’m sorry, Your Honor, the reason I hesitated in actually saying anything that’s really clear is because the discussions that InterDigital has had with either Samsung or Nokia have not involved the litigation counsel. They are direct discussions among the parties principals. “ (page 40)
Nokia’s lawyer “MR. BRINKMAN: Well, I can tell Your Honor that the settlement in licensing issue is taken very seriously by very senior people within Nokia. it’s a business decision and they have taken -- And they’ve analyzed this very carefully and they continue to do so. I don’t think putting them in a room and knocking their heads has much of an impact on their willingness to license or settle. I think that they realize the stakes and they have these conversations with InterDigital directly. And so, although it would be a very similar process in 578, which, as you know, didn’t resolve anything, I tend to be pessimistic that it would make any difference whether you ordered us to come to the ITC to have them or whether we just let them occur in the normal course in New York, as they have been doing in the past.” (page 41)
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
