Kawasaki Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha v. Rorze Corporation

CourtDistrict Court, N.D. California
DecidedJuly 3, 2025
Docket5:22-cv-04947
StatusUnknown

This text of Kawasaki Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha v. Rorze Corporation (Kawasaki Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha v. Rorze Corporation) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. California primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kawasaki Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha v. Rorze Corporation, (N.D. Cal. 2025).

Opinion

1 2 3 4 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 5 NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 6 7 KAWASAKI JUKOGYO KABUSHIKI Case No. 22-cv-04947-PCP KAISHA, 8 Plaintiff, ORDER GRANTING IN PART 9 KAWASAKI’S MOTION TO STRIKE, v. GRANTING IN PART RORZE’S 10 MOTION TO EXCLUDE, GRANTING RORZE CORPORATION, et al., SEALING MOTIONS 11 Defendants. Re: Dkt. Nos. 211, 251, 252, 257, 258 12 13 This order addresses motions related to the opinions and reports of two expert witnesses. 14 Plaintiff Kawasaki moves to strike portions of expert Christian Tregillis’s report and defendant 15 Rorze seeks to exclude expert David Haas’s testimony. For the reasons stated herein, the Court 16 grants in part and denies in part both motions, and grants the related sealing motions. 17 I. Kawasaki’s motion to strike portions of Christian Tregillis’s expert report is granted in part. 18 19 Two months following the close of expert discovery in this case, Rorze served a 20 supplemental report from its damages expert, Christian Tregillis. In his initial report, Mr. Tregillis 21 calculated reasonable royalty damages in reference to Schedule 3 of his report, which details the 22 operating profit rates for robots. He maintains that royalty damages should have instead been 23 calculated in reference to operating profits for the accused Equipment Front End Modules 24 (EFEMs), the figures for which are detailed in Schedule 4, and his supplemental report updates his 25 calculations accordingly. Rorze argues that the supplementation merely corrects a “clerical error” 26 and is thus appropriate under of Federal Rule 26(e), which recognizes a party’s “duty to 27 supplement” information in an expert report later found to be incomplete or erroneous. Fed. R. 1 Kawasaki counters that the new report goes beyond a Rule 26(e)(2) supplementation and 2 constitutes a new opinion altogether. Specifically, Kawasaki takes issue with two portions of the 3 report: Mr. Tregillis’s opinions (1) that operating profits act as a “cap” on royalties, and (2) that 4 there are years in which Kawasaki is entitled to no reasonable royalty because Rorze made no 5 operating profits that year.1 6 As an initial matter, Mr. Tregillis may update his report to reference Schedule 4 rather than 7 Schedule 3. The Court agrees that updates to Schedule 12 of his report to reflect EFEM profit 8 rather than robot profit lies within the scope of Rule 26(e). Mr. Tregillis did highlight this error to 9 Kawasaki during his deposition. He also provided a seemingly routine update to Section 2.1 of his 10 report by correcting Schedules 1.1 and 1.2—updates to which Kawasaki did not object. Mr. 11 Tregillis may correct Schedule 12 in a similar manner. 12 Conversely, Mr. Tregillis may not offer opinions about the effect of his correction on any 13 hypothetical negotiations between the parties. Rule 26(e) imposes a duty on parties to supplement 14 incomplete or incorrect expert reports; it does not, however, “create a loophole through which a 15 party” can offer entirely new expert opinions “to [its] advantage after the court’s deadline for 16 doing so has passed.” Luke v. Family Care and Urgent Meds. Clinics, 323 Fed. Appx. 496, 500 17 (9th Cir. 2009). 18 That Rorze’s supplementation goes beyond a mere Rule 26(e) supplementation is 19 demonstrated by the additional text Mr. Tregillis provided in his supplemental report. Unlike his 20 updates to section 2.1, Mr. Tregillis provided seven paragraphs of new, explanatory text to 21 accompany his updates to schedule 12. See Dkt. No. 251-2, at 6–8, ¶¶10–16. To be sure, some of 22 this text simply describes the corrections he made to schedule 12. But these paragraphs also 23 explicitly discuss applying “a cap” on royalty payments because such royalties “cannot exceed … 24 operating profits.” And as a corollary to that, Mr. Tregillis opines in paragraph 14 that Rorze’s 25 26 1 Kawasaki also objected to Mr. Tregillis’s opinion that the proposed royalty offered by 27 Kawasaki’s expert, Mr. Haas, acts as a cap if operating profits exceed Mr. Haas’s proposed 1 lack of operating profits in certain years means that Kawasaki should not receive any royalty in 2 certain years. Mr. Tregillis did not disclose these opinions in his original report and, because he 3 supplemented that report after the close of expert discovery, Kawasaki was unable to depose him 4 about these opinions. 5 Kawasaki’s motion is therefore granted in part. Mr. Tregillis may update schedule 12 of 6 his report to reflect its reliance on schedule 4 rather than schedule 3. But Mr. Tregillis may not 7 offer opinions about the effect of that change on any hypothetical negotiations between the parties. 8 In connection with this motion the parties sought to file material related to Rorze’s 9 confidential business information under seal. The Court concludes that at this stage there is good 10 cause to support sealing this information and therefore grants the parties’ sealing motions. See 11 Dkt. Nos. 251, 257, 258. 12 II. Rorze’s motion to exclude the testimony of expert David Haas is granted in part. 13 Rorze moves to exclude five of Mr. Haas’s opinions regarding (1) damages related to 14 foreign sales, (2) damages incurred before notice, (3) lost profits damages, (4) reasonable royalty 15 damages, and (5) commercial success. The Court grants in part Rorze’s motion and excludes Mr. 16 Haas’s testimony regarding damages incurred before notice. The Court otherwise denies Rorze’s 17 motion. 18 A. Mr. Haas may testify about damages incurred from foreign sales of the accused products. 19 20 Mr. Haas’s damages calculations include all Rorze’s sales of the accused products, 21 including sales related to products allegedly manufactured, shipped, and delivered outside of the 22 United States. Rorze objects to Mr. Haas’s damages calculations because the federal patent 23 statutes allow a patentee to recover damages for patent infringement only from another party who 24 “makes, uses, offers to sell, or sells any patented invention, within the United States[.]” 35 U.S.C. 25 § 271(a) (emphasis added); see also 35 U.S.C. § 284. Because a party cannot recover damages for 26 patent infringement “when a patented product is made and sold in another country,” Microsoft 27 Corp. v. AT&T Corp., 590 U.S. 437, 441 (2007), Rorze argues that Mr. Haas’s opinion is the 1 excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. 2 The problem with this argument is that whether Rorze is ultimately liable to Kawasaki for 3 products sold and manufactured oversees is a question of liability, not expert opinion. Courts 4 regularly consider whether patent infringement extends to overseas sales at summary judgment. 5 See, e.g., Asia Vital Components Co., Ltd. v. Asetek Danmark A/S, 377 F. Supp. 3d 990, 1022-23 6 (N.D. Cal. 2019) (recognizing the “fact-intensive nature” of the foreign sales inquiry); Ziptronix, 7 Inc. v. Omnivision Techs., INc., 71 F. Supp. 3d 1090, 1096 (N.D. Cal. 2014) (characterizing 8 foreign sales as matter of “infringement liability”); see also Metaswitch Networks Ltd. v. Genband 9 US LLC, 2016 WL 874737, at *4 (E.D. Tex. Mar. 5, 2016) (distinguishing disputes of fact from 10 expert reliability). The Court’s standing order limits parties to one 25-page summary judgment 11 motion unless otherwise granted leave.2 Rorze did not raise this argument in its motion for 12 summary judgment and doing so as a matter of Rule 702 motion runs contrary to the Court’s 13 standing order.

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Bluebook (online)
Kawasaki Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha v. Rorze Corporation, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kawasaki-jukogyo-kabushiki-kaisha-v-rorze-corporation-cand-2025.