Dali Wireless, Inc. v. Corning Optical Communications LLC

• Court: District Court, N.D. California
• Decided: February 6, 2023
• Docket: 3:20-cv-06469
• Status: Unknown

Opinion

1 2 3 4 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 5 NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 6 7 DALI WIRELESS, INC., Case No. 20-cv-06469-EMC

8 Plaintiff, ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFF’S 9 v. MOTION FOR INDICATIVE RULING CONCERNING VACATUR 10 CORNING OPTICAL COMMUNICATIONS LLC, Docket No. 283 11 Defendant. 12 13 14 Plaintiff Dali Wireless, Inc. (“Dali”) filed suit against Defendant Corning Optical 15 Communications LLC (“Corning”) for patent infringement. Docket No. 154. The Court issued a 16 claim construction order. Docket No. 85. After the Court granted summary judgment in favor of 17 Corning, Dali appealed to the Federal Circuit. Docket No. 276. The parties then entered a 18 settlement to resolve this case. As part of the settlement, the parties agreed that Dali could seek 19 vacatur of the Court’s July 18, 2021 Claim Construction Order, which may be pertinent to Dali’s 20 pending infringement suits against AT&T and CommScope in the Eastern District of Texas. 21 Accordingly, Dali filed an Unopposed Motion for Indicative Ruling Concerning Vacatur. Docket 22 Nos. 283, 284. 23 This Court may consider Dali’s motion. Fed. R. Civ. P. 62.1(a)(3)(“If a timely motion is 24 made for relief that the court lacks authority to grant because of an appeal that has been docketed 25 and is pending, the court may . . . state either that it would grant the motion if the court of appeals 26 remands for that purpose or that the motion raises a substantial issue.”). Under Rule 60(b)(6), a 27 district court may relieve a party from a final judgment for “any other reason that justifies relief.” 1 60(b)(6), district courts employ an “equitable balancing test,” which considers various factors 2 including “the consequences and attendant hardships of dismissal or refusal to dismiss, the 3 competing values of finality of judgment and right to relitigation of unreviewed disputes, the 4 motives of the party whose voluntary action mooted the case, and the public policy against 5 allowing a losing party to buy an eraser for the public record.” Ayotte v. Am. Econ. Ins. Co., 578 6 F. App’x 657, 658–59 (9th Cir. 2014) (cleaned up) (citing Am. Games, Inc. v. Trade Prod., Inc., 7 142 F.3d 1164, 1168, 1170 (9th Cir. 1998)). 8 Here, the balance of equitable factors favors denying the motion for vacatur. The parties 9 provide no persuasive reason that they would face any hardship should the Claim Construction 10 Order not be vacated. Although Dali cites the public interest in encouraging settlement of private 11 disputes, the preservation of judicial and party resources, and the potential preclusive effect of the 12 claim construction order, Mot. at 3–4, there is a strong counterveiling interest against permitting 13 parties to effectively “buy an eraser” of this Court’s prior determinations for use in pending or 14 future litigation in other district courts. Ayotte, 578 F. App’x at 658–59. “Judicial precedents are 15 presumptively correct and valuable to the legal community as a whole. They are not merely the 16 property of private litigants and should stand unless a court concludes that the public interest 17 would be served by a vacatur.” U.S. Bancorp Mortg. Co. v. Bonner Mall P’ship, 513 U.S. 18, 26 18 (1994). Dali’s desire to avoid the potential precursor effect of a ruling already litigated and 19 adjudicated has little equitable force. As the Supreme Court opined in U.S. Bancorp Mortg. Co.:

20 Where mootness results from settlement, however, the losing party has voluntarily forfeited his legal remedy by the ordinary processes 21 of appeal or certiorari, thereby surrendering his claim to the equitable remedy of vacatur. The judgment is not unreviewable, but 22 simply unreviewed by his own choice. The denial of vacatur is merely one application of the principle that “[a] suitor's conduct in 23 relation to the matter at hand may disentitle him to the relief he seeks.” Sanders v. United States, 373 U.S. 1, 17, 83 S.Ct. 1068, 24 1078, 10 L.Ed.2d 148 (1963) (citing Fay v. Noia, 372 U.S. 391, 438, 83 S.Ct. 822, 848, 9 L.Ed.2d 837 (1963)). 25 26 513 U.S. at 25; see also Aqua Marine Supply v. AIM Machining, Inc., 247 F.3d 1216, 1221 (Fed. 27 Cir. 2001). The same holds true here. Dali lost below and voluntarily forfeited its equitable claim 1 mootness. 2 As for the encouragement of settlements and preservation of resources, permitting post- 3 facto vacatur via settlement may perversely create or disincentivize parties from settling before 4 claim construction, a process that consumes numerous party and judicial resources. See Ringsby 5 Truck Lines, Inc. v. W. Conf. of Teamsters, 686 F.2d 720, 721 (9th Cir. 1982) (“If the effect of 6 post-judgment settlements were automatically to vacate the trial court’s judgment, any litigant 7 dissatisfied with a trial court’s findings would be able to have them wiped from the books.”). 8 Dali’s reliance on the Federal Circuit in Karl Storz Imaging, Inc. v. Pointe Conception 9 Med., Inc. is misplaced. The Federal Circuit “t[ook] no position on the propriety or necessity of 10 vacatur, leaving it to the district court to apply the principles enunciated in U.S. Bancorp 11 Mortgage Co. v. Bonner Mall Partnership, 513 U.S. 18, 29, 115 S.Ct. 386, 130 L.Ed.2d 233 12 (1994).” 471 F. App’x 904, 2012 WL 2884704 at *1 (Fed. Cir. 2012). 13 Thus, Dali’s Motion for Indicative Ruling Concerning Vacatur is DENIED. This Court 14 does not intend to vacate its claim construction order. 15 This order disposes of Docket No. 283. 16 17 IT IS SO ORDERED. 18 19 Dated: February 6, 2023 20 21 ______________________________________ EDWARD M. CHEN 22 United States District Judge 23 24 25 26 27