In yet another example of a Judge simplifying a patent litigation trial, Administrative Law Judge David Shaw denied Ericsson's attempt to add 15 claims to their existing 130 against Samsung.
http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/03/samsung-succeeds-in-blocking-ericssons.html
Last week I also discussed that I thought judges were beginning to get frustrated with the overwhelming amount of patent litigation in the ITC, and "fighting" against it by denying frivolous claims and attempting to make the cases as simple as possible.
I believe that this is another one of those examples. In a situation where the extra 15 claims may have been legitimate, but the judge had a perfectly legitimate reason not to include them, he decided to lean towards the option that simplifies the case.
I think that this is deliberate behavior to attempt to discourage patent litigation and reduce the workload of these judges. These types of things have been coming up increasingly often, and I discussed it last week as well. It may be kind of a stretch, and of course it would be hard to prove that this was really true, but I do believe that it at least plays a part in their decisions.
Yuval, could it be that these Judges are trying to simplify the process to make patent litigation cases more efficient? Could it also be that limiting the number of claims might force companies to focus on their most important innovations rather than allow them to freely try to claim as much of their respective markets as possible?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand what gives the judge the arbitrary authority to deny the addition of more claims. Another judge limited it to 25 claims. There is not type of uniform law in this system.
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