Summary of yesterday's Court action in San Francisco. Courtesy of PETERD13 Raging bull #373665:
"Just got home - long drive in rush hour traffic...
I go to the court room at 12:45 and 6 IWOV attys were already there. Within 15 minutes the courtroom filled up with 20 more attys, clearly there were a number of cases to heard this day. At 1:10, another 6 attys came in and sat on the IWOV side (YIKES!!) That's right, 12 attys showed up for their side (although only 4/5 sat at the atty bench. At 1:15 MRR came in. At 1:20, Valdetero and Dossas arrived, handshakes between the 4 of us all around.
First case called (not us) at 1:35. Sort of interesting, about a preliminary injunction being removed (Seeborg leaning heavily on the plaintive to explain why, after 3 yrs, the injunction should stay in place and not be removed) - of value because it involved an injunction (which Seeborg clearly stated was a VERY powerful tool within infringement lawsuits and should be used VERY sparingly - it was not his case originally and the injunction was not ordered by him...), and it again offered an insight into how Seeborg sees things. He always tells the attys which way he is leaning, and so far, he has never been persuaded to change his mind.
Second case is us, called about 2:45, lasted until 3:40. Attys introduced, the surprise - 2 attys from HP, 2 attys from Autonomy - first time either company had any representation there. Dossas and Valdetero for VCSy.
First thing Seeborg says: Bad news, the trail has to be postponed. A criminal case in his court (which naturally takes priority over all civil matters ) ended in a hung jury, and must be retried on that date. He did say that he would rule on today’s motions, and then set up a conference to establish a new date fairly quickly, knowing that this has dragged on for quite some time. (After the hearing, Dossas told us this was good news. Ray Niro will/wants to be here to litigate and had a scheduling conflict in August.)
Moving on, Seeborg suggests there are many motions to be heard, let’s do one at a time. This process quickly changed as he realized that most of the motions were inter-related, and taking all aspects at once, point by point was more prudent, covering all ground…
Okay, as usual, he states his leanings. And as expected, he seemed to not want to ‘prevent’ anything/anyone from presenting evidence at trial.
IWOV argued a lot at almost every point, and routinely ran into the same constant reply from Seeborg. Most of what they argued was trial/cross examination material and not applicable to this hearing. The second atty (whom I had never seen before) was called on to argue the ‘damage’ declarations by both of our experts, especially Gemini (who he kept pronouncing like the astrologic sign), suggesting that their methods were inaccurate. Seeborg repeatedly asked him, if any of their testimony was inaccurate, should all their testimony be ‘not allowed’? ‘Yes’ was the response, and I don’t think Seebord was buying it AT ALL.
Some disagreement about the ‘two’ purported intellectual property thieves. IWOV argued that it was too late to bring them into this case – Dossas argued that he had to dig to find them (‘connect the dots’ he said – lol) and that IWOV never mentioned them. IWOV attys argued McAuley’s deposition never mentioned them, but he was deposed by IWOV, not VCSY – seemed that ended the argument, but Seeborg might rule against their admission. I asked Dossas about this after the hearing, he said it didn’t matter, he could always just ask McAuley about them. I liked the answer – don’t have to ‘prove’ anything, just the mention of this is ‘fire’.
Finally, Bijal pushed hard on some old points and Seeborg appeared to get angry, or as angry as he will show. He stopped the atty, and told him to stop arguing the ‘Markman’ ruling! He said we must agree to disagree. He appreciated his persistence, knows he doesn’t agree with the ruling or like it at all, but ‘move on’. He did say that others ‘higher up’ than he might agree w/ their position, but not he, and not now. It wasn’t a ruling per se, but once again it did indicate something about Seeborg. And the more Bajil argued, the worse for him it got. It felt like some people never know when to shut up, or something like that…
Anyway, my opinion: The only point where IWOV seemed to win was the ‘indirect’ infringement argument put forward by Maly. And as Valdetero and I agreed, small potatoes.
Status quo when the rulings are announced. No Summary Judgment, most, if not all expert testimony allowed. All declarations allowed."
