Disney Enterprises, Inc. v. Kappos

923 F. Supp. 2d 788, 2013 WL 508941, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17977
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Virginia
DecidedFebruary 11, 2013
DocketNo. 1:12cv687 (LMB/TRJ)
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 923 F. Supp. 2d 788 (Disney Enterprises, Inc. v. Kappos) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Virginia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

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Disney Enterprises, Inc. v. Kappos, 923 F. Supp. 2d 788, 2013 WL 508941, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17977 (E.D. Va. 2013).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION

LEONIE M. BRINKEMA, District Judge.

Before the Court are the plaintiffs First and Second Motions in Limine, the defendant’s Motion in Limine, and the defendant’s Motion for Partial Summary Judg[791]*791ment, or in the Alternative, for a Remand. For the reasons that follow and as stated in open court, the plaintiffs two Motions in Limine will be denied, the defendant’s Motion in Limine will be granted, and the defendant’s Motion for Partial Summary Judgment or, in the Alternative, for a Remand will be denied by an appropriate Order to accompany this Memorandum Opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

On February 21, 1996, Steven T. Kirsch (“Kirsch”), with assignee Infoseek Corporation, filed a patent application that resulted in the issuance of United States Patent No, 5,968,915 (“the '915 patent”) on October 5, 1999. See Administrative Record (“A.R.”) at 1-3, 44^6, 189-97. Almost exactly two years later on October 4, 2001, Kirsch, again with assignee Infoseek Corporation, filed Application No. 09/970,772 (“the '772 application”), which sought reissue of the '915 patent pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 251. A.R. at 136, 138, 140. Around August 2006, Infoseek assigned all interest in the '915 patent and in the pending '772 application to the plaintiff, Disney Enterprises, Inc. (“Disney”). A.R. at, 114-16,1375-78.

After extensive prosecution of the '772 application before the United States,Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”), the examiner issued a final rejection of all of the '772 application’s pending claims on April 6, 2011. A.R. at 2900. The primary independent claims in the '772 application were rejected as being unpatentable over United States Patent No. 5,708,780 (the “Levergood patent”) because of obviousness in view of admitted prior art in the '915 patent and further in view of United States Patent No. 5,732,219. A.R. at 2903.

Disney appealed this rejection to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences1 (“the Board”) on April 13, 2011. A.R. at 2938. The Board affirmed the examiner, and denied Disney’s subsequent request for rehearing. A.R. at 3024-26, 3050-53. On June 22, 2012, Disney filed this civil action pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 145, alleging that the Board erred when it concluded that the pending claims in the '772 application would have been considered obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103, and seeking a judgment that it is entitled to a reissue patent for the inventions defined by the pending claims in the '772 application. Compl. ¶¶ 1, 23-24. A bench trial is scheduled for February 12, 2013.

II. DISCUSSION

A. USPTO’s Motion in. Limine

In its Motion in Limine, the USP-TO argues that the expert opinion of David Geller, Disney’s expert witness, on the source code in the Levergood patent was untimely produced and accordingly seeks to preclude Disney from introducing any evidence regarding that source code. Specifically, it seeks to preclude Mr. Geller from testifying about his conclusions regarding the expiration attribute of the session identification (SID) based on that source code and the documents labeled DISNEY01532-35.

The Court issued a Scheduling Order oh August 23, 2012, which required the parties to complete discovery by December 14, 2012. Dkt. No. 10. On September 10, 2012, a magistraté judge approved the discovery plan ' submitted by the parties. Dkt. No. 12. That discovery plan provided that Disney would serve its opening expert disclosures on or before October 15, 2012, [792]*792that the USPTO would serve its responsive expert disclosures on or before November 14, 2012, and that plaintiffs would serve any rebuttal expert disclosures on or before November 30, 2012. Dkt. No. 11. That schedule was later amended to allow a few days of additional time for each expert report to be served. Dkt. Nos. 5, 24,25. .

On October 18, 2012, Disney served the USPTO with Mr. Geller’s expert report. See Decl. of David Geller [Dkt. No. 44], Ex. A (“Geller Expert Report”) at 5. In his report, Mr. Geller did not expressly analyze the code in the Levergood patent, focusing on the patent’s specification, with only brief references to the expiration attribute of the SID. See id. at 45 (quoting description of the SID but highlighting the accessible domain and IP address elements, not the expiration time); id. at 48 (quoting Levergood explanation of validation that includes expiration time, but emphasizing IP address and domain fields).

The USPTO responded with the report of Glenn Weadock, its expert, on November 21, 2012. See Mem. of Law in Supp. of Def.’s Mot. in Limine to Preclude Introduction of Evidence Concerning PL’s Untimely Expert Opinions [Dkt. No. 35], Ex. 1 (‘Weadock Expert Report”) at 8. Mr. Weadock wrote in his expert report that the SID taught in the Levergood patent has an “expires” attribute that “ranges from 1 to 256 hours,” meaning that “the maximum value would be 10 days and 16 hours,” and accordingly “would be considered by a person of skill to have some degree of persistence, and also to be intended for storage and re-use, given that the typical browser session is much less than 10 days and 16 hours.” Id. at 23; see also id. at 31 (“Levergood never defines precisely what he means by a ‘session,’ but if the SID were never to be stored and reused, it is not clear why it would need an expiration flag that could extend beyond 10 days, as Levergood teaches.”); id. at 28 (“Levergood’s SID also includes the attribute of an expiration date.”).

In his Reply Expert Report, which was served on December 7, 2012, fourteen days after the Weadock report was disclosed, Mr. Geller responded to the statements regarding the expiration attribute by stating:

20. For example, Mr. Weadock argues that a SID is persistent because an [sic] SID may have an expiration date value of between 1 and 256 hours.... He reaches this conclusion by performing a calculation based on the size of the expiration date field (16-bit), and the observation that the SID is a sixteen character ASCII string that encodes 96 bits of data, with 6 bits of data per character.... Mr. Weadock did not reveal any of the calculations he used to arrive at his conclusion that the maximum value of the expiration field in the SID is 256 hours, so I cannot independently validate this conclusion.
21. Ultimately, the fact that the maximum theoretical value of the 16-bit date field SID of the [sic] could be “256” (~10.6 days according to Mr. Weadock) is irrelevant. This is because there is nothing in Levergood suggesting that this maximum theoretical SID expiration date value is ever used in the Levergood scheme.
22. Despite this, Mr. Weadock theorizes that because a SID could have this maximum theoretical value, it must mean the SID is being used as a persistent identifier....
23. Mr. Weadock overlooks two simple, and more logical explanations for the inclusion of a date field in the SID. First, it is true that the SID is “re-used” in the Levergood scheme. Mr. Weadock, however, doesn’t comment on how [793]

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923 F. Supp. 2d 788, 2013 WL 508941, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17977, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/disney-enterprises-inc-v-kappos-vaed-2013.