Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-5_10-cv-04435/USCOURTS-cand-5_10-cv-04435-22/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 190
Nature of Suit: Other Contract Actions
Cause of Action: 28:1332 Diversity-Other Contract

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

*E-Filed: February 4, 2015*

NOT FOR CITATION

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

SAN JOSE DIVISION

TESSERA, INC.,

Plaintiff,

v.

UTAC (TAIWAN) CORPORATION,

Defendant. ____________________________________/

No. C10-04435 EJD (HRL)

ORDER RE: DISCOVERY DISPUTE 

JOINT REPORT #5-#6

[Dkt. Nos. 193, 194]

Plaintiff Tessera, Inc. (“Tessera”) sues Defendant UTAC (Taiwan) Corporation (“UTC”) for 

alleged failure to pay royalties under a license agreement. The first phase of this action concerned a 

contract interpretation dispute between Tessera and UTC about the criteria for determining which 

UTC products are royalty-bearing. Following discovery on that subject, the parties submitted 

summary judgment motions relating to contract interpretation, which were ruled on by the court. 

The court entered an Amended Case Management Order that required Tessera to provide its 

infringement contentions in accordance with Patent L.R. 3-1, 3-2, and 3-3 with respect to its claim 

for royalties under the license agreement. Tessera served UTC with the required disclosure, 

identifying 32 claims of 12 licensed patents and providing claim charts contending that two types of 

UTC packages—its w-BGA packages and DFN packages—are covered by the claims of licensed 

patents and are therefore royalty-bearing. Tessera’s disclosure asserted that Tessera did not have 

enough information to determine whether a third type of package, UTC’s LGA SiP package, is 

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covered by the claims of the licensed patents and is therefore royalty-bearing. UTC disputes 

Tessera’s contentions, and also served Tessera with invalidity contentions.

Presently before the Court is the parties’ Discovery Dispute Joint Report (“DDJR”) #5 and 

#6. Dkt. Nos. 193, 194. Each will be addressed in turn.

A. DISCOVERY DISPUTE JOINT REPORT #5

DDJR #5 concerns whether Tessera must produce certain documents relating to claims by 

Tessera in earlier suits against other parties in which Tessera has asserted that certain packages 

infringe Tessera’s U.S. Khandros patents. The documents that UTC seeks include: documents 

containing Tessera’s infringement contentions, including briefs and claim charts concerning claim 

construction and Tessera’s infringement contentions; expert reports and other supporting materials, 

such as documents relating to testing, modeling and analysis of accused packages; and decisions 

and/or findings by courts and court-appointed experts concerning Tessera’s infringement 

contentions and claim construction of the Khandros Patents. The specific parties and products for 

which UTC seeks these materials are the following: Samsung’s w-BGA packages in Samsung 

Electronics Co., Ltd. v. Tessera Technologies, Inc., C02-05837 (N.D. Cal.); Micron and Infineon’s 

w-BGA packages in Tessera, Inc. v. Micron Technology Inc., 05-CV-0094 (E.D. Tex.); Amkor’s wBGA packages and other BGA packages in Amkor Technology, Inc. v. Tessera, Inc., 16 531/VRO; 

and Nanya’s w-BGA packages Semiconductor Chips with Minimized Chip Package Size and 

Products Containing Same (III), ITC No. 630 (337-TA-630). UTC also requests production of the 

findings of the court-appointed expert in Tessera Inc. v. Advanced Micro Devices Inc., C05-04063 

(N.D. Cal.).

“Parties may obtain discovery regarding any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to any 

party’s claim or defense . . . . Relevant information need not be admissible at the trial if the 

discovery appears reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.” Fed. R. 

Civ. P. 26(b)(1). 

UTC argues that the documents it seeks directly relate to Tessera’s patent assertions in two 

ways. First, UTC contends that the five foreign patents Tessera is asserting against UTC’s w-BGA 

packages are part of the same family of patents—the “Khandros Patents”—that Tessera has asserted 

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United States District Court

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in all of its prior suits against w-BGA packages. According to UTC, Tessera’s assertions in the 

earlier suits concerning what the U.S. Khandros Patents cover and whether they are infringed by wBGA packages directly relate to the issues in this case of what the foreign Khandros Patents cover 

and whether they are infringed by UTC’s w-BGA packages. 

None of the patents asserted in the prior cases are asserted here. In addition, UTC does not 

cite to, and the court is not aware of any, case law holding that a party’s statements about patents in 

a prior litigation can impact the construction of different patents that are asserted in a subsequent, 

unrelated case. Accordingly, UTC’s argument regarding the relevancy of Tessera’s assertions in the 

earlier suits concerning what the U.S. Khandros Patents cover and whether they are infringed by wBGA packages is unconvincing.

Second, UTC argues that Tessera’s assertions in earlier suits that the Khandros Patents 

disclose and claim w-BGA packages are relevant to the validity of the U.S. patents it is asserting 

here. UTC has identified the same Khandros Patents that Tessera asserted in the earlier suits as 

prior art that invalidates the six U.S. patents that Tessera is asserting against the w-BGA packages 

here. The U.S. patents refer to Khandros Patents as relevant prior art and purport to claim an 

invention addressing the same types of semiconductor packages. Moreover, in the earlier suits, 

Tessera asserted that the Khandros Patents disclose and claim w-BGA packages. Here, Tessera 

contends that six of the U.S. patents it is asserting also disclose and claim w-BGA packages. UTC 

argues that because the Khandros Patents predate the U.S. patents, the fact that they disclose and 

claim the same package structures renders the U.S. patents invalid. 

UTC requests that Tessera produce documents from prior litigation involving patents that are 

not asserted in the present case. UTC is seeking statements made by Tessera about prior art and 

patents not at issue here. Such statements are not relevant to validity. The scope of the prior art 

references asserted in this case is determined by the references themselves, not by statements made 

in prior litigation regarding infringement of these references. See, e.g., Net MoneyIN, Inc. v. 

VeriSign, Inc., 545 F.3d 1359, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2008). Accordingly, UTC’s argument that Tessera’s 

assertions in earlier suits are relevant to the validity of the U.S. patents it is asserting here, fails.

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Lastly, UTC argues that the requested documents should be produced because they meet the 

“technological nexus” standard articulated in Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., C12-00630 

LHK (PSG), 2013 WL 3246094, at *20 (N.D. Cal. June 26, 2013). In Apple Inc. v. Samsung 

Electronics Co., the court considered a request for prior litigation documents. The court ruled that 

“the appropriate standard for determining the relevance of documents from those other cases turned 

on the similarity between the patents in the disputes. To satisfy the standard, the other case must 

involve the patents-in-suit or patents covering the same or similar technologies, features, or designs 

as the patents-in-suits. . . . [T]he starting point of the “technological nexus” inquiry is the patents at 

issue, not the products at issue.” Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., 2013 WL 3246094, at *20 

(internal quotation marks omitted). “[T]he technological nexus standard is not a substitute for the 

relevance inquiry under Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b) but rather is shorthand for the balancing inquiry in 

which the court ordinarily must engage.” Id.

Here, UTC has failed to show that the prior litigation involves the patents-in-suit or patents 

covering the same or similar technologies, features, or designs as the patents-in-suits. UTC 

contends that the five foreign patents Tessera is asserting against UTC’s w-BGA packages are part

of the same family of patents that Tessera has asserted in all of its prior suits against w-BGA 

packages. According to UTC, all of the Khandros Patents, both U.S. and foreign, trace back to the 

07/586,758 application that Tessera filed on September 24, 1990. UTC conclusorily argues that the 

Khandros Patents relate to the same basic invention and share the same core claim terms. UTC

fails, however, to discuss any specifics about the inventions at issue or the core claim terms in the 

relevant Khandros Patents. Accordingly, UTC has failed to meet the “technological nexus”

standard.

Accordingly, UTC’s request for production of certain documents relating to claims by 

Tessera in earlier suits against other parties in which Tessera has asserted that certain packages 

infringe Tessera’s U.S. Khandros patents is denied.

B. DISCOVERY DISPUTE JOINT REPORT #6

DDJR #6 concerns whether Tessera must produce certain documents from earlier 

proceedings against other parties in which Tessera asserted that certain packages infringed Tessera’s 

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U.S. Khandros Patents. The documents UTC seeks relate to certain prior art, referred to as the 

OMPAC prior art, that parties in earlier proceedings asserted as prior art that invalidated the U.S. 

Khandros Patents. Specifically, UTC seeks unredacted portions of Tessera’s prehearing and posthearing briefs concerning the OMPAC prior art in Semiconductor Chips with Minimized Chip 

Package Size and Products Containing Same (II), ITC No. 605 (337-TA-605), and Semiconductor 

Chips with Minimized Chip Package Size and Products Containing Same (III), ITC No. 630 (337-

TA-630). 

In these two ITC proceedings, the respondents contended that the OMPAC prior art

invalidated the Khandros Patents that Tessera was asserting. In seeking to distinguish the OMPAC 

prior art from the Khandros Patents in the ITC proceedings, Tessera made statements seeking to 

limit the scope and meaning of the claim term “movable” in the Khandros Patents. The same 

“movable” term appears in the foreign Khandros Patents that Tessera is asserting here. UTC argues 

that Tessera’s statements about what the term “movable” means are therefore relevant to the 

meaning of this same term in the foreign Khandros Patents. UTC also argues that the documents 

meet the “technological nexus” standard articulated in Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., for 

the same reasons laid out in DDJR #5. 

The court denies UTC’s request for production for the same reasons discussed above in 

regards to DDJR #5. Specifically, in regards to the meaning of the term “movable,” UTC does not 

cite to, and the court is not aware of any, case law holding that a party’s statements about patents in 

a prior litigation can impact the construction of different patents that are asserted in a subsequent, 

unrelated case. In regards to UTC’s argument that the documents meet the “technological nexus” 

standard, UTC has failed to show that the prior litigation involves the patents-in-suit or patents 

covering the same or similar technologies, features, or designs as the patents-in-suits. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: February 4, 2015

HOWARD R. LLOYD

UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE

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United States District Court

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C10-04435 EJD (HRL) Order will be electronically mailed to:

Benjamin W. Hattenbach bhattenbach@irell.com

David H. Herrington dherrington@cgsh.com, dherrington@cgsh.com

Dominik B. Slusarczyk dslusarczyk@irell.com, mspillner@tessera.com

Jennifer Renee Bunn jbunn@irell.com

Joseph Mark Lipner jlipner@irell.com, csilver@irell.com, mdonovan@irell.com, slee@irell.com

Kevin Patrick Kiley kkiley@irell.com

Lawrence B. Friedman lfriedman@cgsh.com

Michael F. Heafey mheafey@kslaw.com, phennings@kslaw.com

Morgan Chu mchu@irell.com

Morvarid Metanat mmetanat@orrick.com

Nathaniel E. Jedrey njedrey@cgsh.com

Richard William Krebs rkrebs@irell.com, cmedina@irell.com, rbrown@tessera.com, 

Slee@irell.com, sveeraraghavan@tessera.com, tegarcia@tessera.com

Ryan Alexander Ward rward@irell.com

Counsel are responsible for distributing copies of this document to co-counsel who have not 

registered for e-filing under the court’s CM/ECF program.

Case 5:10-cv-04435-EJD Document 227 Filed 02/04/15 Page 6 of 6