Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-4_06-cv-02138/USCOURTS-cand-4_06-cv-02138-35/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 830
Nature of Suit: Patent
Cause of Action: 35:271 Patent Infringement

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

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United States District Court

For the Northern District of California

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

ATMEL CORPORATION,

Plaintiff,

 v.

 AUTHENTEC INC,

Defendant. /

No. C-06-02138 CW (EDL)

ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND

DENYING IN PART PLAINTIFF’S

MOTION FOR ADDITIONAL TIME TO

COMPLETE DEPOSITIONS;

GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN

PART DEFENDANT’S RENEWED

MOTION TO COMPEL AND DENYING

WITHOUT PREJUDICE PLAINTIFFS’

MOTION FOR LEAVE TO TAKE

DEPOSITIONS OF THIRD PARTY

CUSTOMERS, NON-PARTY LEXAR

MEDIA’S MOTION TO QUASH,

DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO COMPEL

COMPLETION OF DISCOVERY,

PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO COMPEL

DEPOSITION OF JEFF LEE;

PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO COMPEL

PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS AND

DEFENDANT’S MOTION TO COMPEL

DEPOSITIONS

On January 30, 2008, the Court held a hearing on Plaintiff’s Motion for Additional Time to

Complete Depositions (docket number 264) and Defendant’s Renewed Motion to Compel (docket

number 273). For the reasons stated at the hearing, the Court issues the following Order.

Plaintiff’s Motion for Additional Time

Plaintiff’s Motion for Additional Time to Complete Depositions seeks a total of twenty-nine

more hours with six deponents who have all previously been deposed on the grounds that Defendant

produced relevant documents after the initial depositions of these witnesses. Specifically, Plaintiff

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seeks to depose Scott Moody, Defendant’s co-founder, chairman and CEO, for seven additional

hours, Dave Setlak, Defendant’s co-founder and Chief Technical Officer, for six additional hours,

Art Stewart, Defendant’s Vice President of Worldwide Sales, for five additional hours, Peter

Sherlock, Defendant’s Vice President of Product Development, for four additional hours, Larry

Ciaccia, Defendant’s President, for four additional hours, and Michael Boshra, a technical staff

member, for three additional hours. As part of the meet and confer process, Plaintiff proposed a cap

of twenty hours for Plaintiff’s additional depositions and seven hours for additional depositions that

Defendant sought to take, to be allocated among deponents as each party saw fit. Defendant

proposed fourteen hours each. For the reasons stated in the papers and by the Court at the hearing,

Plaintiff shall have twenty hours of additional deposition time to be allocated as it sees fit among the

six deponents at issue in this motion. Defendant shall have nine hours of additional deposition time

to be allocated as it sees fit for additional depositions of Mr. Mainguet and Mr. Charrat. Counsel

should keep in mind that the primary function of these depositions is to question the witnesses about

recently produced documents. 

Defendant’s Renewed Motion to Compel

Licensing agreements

Defendant seeks to compel production of all semiconductor patent licenses, and in particular,

the 1998 Harris Corp. agreement, the 2000 ST Microelectronics agreement, and the 2003 Patent

License Agreement referenced in Plaintiff’s Form 10Q filing with the SEC. Plaintiff resists

discovery of these agreements on the grounds that they are actually settlement agreements

containing licenses and that they are not relevant because they do not concern the patents-in-suit. 

See Opp. at 2-3. 

The definition of relevance for purposes of discovery is quite broad. Here, these agreements

at a minimum have some relevance to damages even if they do not involve the precise patents-insuit, and so must be produced. See Andelman Decl. Ex. A at 3 (article regarding the 1998 Harris

agreement stating that there is a cross-license agreement “effectively ending all patent disputes and

possible litigation between the two companies”); Andelman Decl. Ex. A at 2 (article regarding the

2000 agreement with ST Electronics stating that the companies “settled” their disputes and entered

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into a broad cross-license agreement); Andelman Decl. Ex. F at 13 (2003 SEC filing stating that

Plaintiff entered into a patent license agreement which “cross-licensed significant patent portfolios

of each company.”). Plaintiff is improperly focused on whether these agreements are admissible

rather than discoverable. 

Accordingly, Plaintiff shall produce all licensing agreements, including but not limited to the

three raised by Defendant. After production, Plaintiff shall provide declarations from the person(s)

most knowledgeable affiliated with Plaintiff’s company, not outside counsel, for each Plaintiff entity

detailing the search done for these documents. 

Search of Steve Laub’s e-mail and notes

Defendant has made a showing that there is a serious question whether Plaintiff has properly

searched the e-mail account and files of Plaintiff’s CEO Steve Laub for responsive documents. 

Plaintiff’s Rule 30(b)(6) deponent testified that he did not know whether the files of Mr. Laub have

been searched in response to any discovery requests in this litigation. See Supp. Andelman Decl.

Ex. H at 166:12-18. Further, the deponent testified that he did not know whether the e-mail

accounts of the nine people who work in the hardware and software fingerchip products were

searched. See id. at 103:17-104:1. 

Defendant is particularly concerned with commentary from or to Mr. Laub regarding several

presentations regarding the technology at issue. Plaintiff points out that it produced those

presentations. Production of the presentations, however, without searching for any commentary or

notes about them, is insufficient. Failure to search the Chief Executive Officer’s e-mail for

responsive documents is not consistent with Plaintiff’s discovery obligations. Accordingly, Plaintiff

shall search for commentary to and/or from Mr. Laub regarding Authentec and/or the presentations

in Mr. Laub’s work e-mail account, his notes and his personal computer for the time period from

when Mr. Laub became employed with Plaintiff (which Plaintiff represented was after this lawsuit

was filed) to the present. In addition, Plaintiff shall search for the same documents, if it has not

done so already, in the e-mail accounts of the nine employees who work in the hardware and

software fingerchip products referenced by Mr. Charrat in his deposition from the time the lawsuit

was filed to the present. See Supp. Andelman Decl. Ex. H at 103:17-104:1. Production shall be

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complete no later than February 15, 2008. In addition, Plaintiff shall provide declaration(s) from the

person(s) most knowledgeable affiliated with Plaintiff’s company, not outside counsel, detailing the

search done for these documents. 

Dautriche/Vellou documents

Defendant argues that Plaintiff has not produced relevant documents, specifically an

abandoned patent application, regarding work done relating to the conception and reduction to

practice of the ‘114 patent by Vellou and Dautriche. Plaintiff argues that any such documents would

be irrelevant because the work is unrelated to the patents-in-suit. Plaintiff further states it has

conducted a diligent search, including contacting the law firm of Marks & Clark, but that no

responsive documents exist. Accordingly, Plaintiff shall serve a declaration or declarations from the

person(s) most knowledgeable detailing the investigation conducted to find responsive documents. 

Written discovery

Defendant argues that Plaintiff has failed to comply with the Court’s prior Order to

supplement its responses to interrogatories because the responses are qualified as based on

investigation to date. See, e.g., DeMory Decl. Ex. 17 at 5:24. In particular, Defendant seeks further

responses to interrogatory number 7 and the related requests for admission numbers 2, 3, 5, 6, 26,

28, 41, 42, 45, 46, 55 and 56. Plaintiff argues that the requests for admissions posed by Defendant

called for legal conclusions. The Court is not convinced that this objection is well-taken, but

resolves the issue, as stated at the hearing, by ordering Plaintiff to answer the following two factual

requests for admission in lieu of the twelve requests listed above: (1) Admit that there were other

licensees other than Plaintiff to the patents-in-suit as of the time the complaint was filed; and (2)

Admit that Thales has a license to the patents-in-suit with the right to sub-license. If Plaintiff admits

that there are other licensees, it shall identify them. Plaintiff shall respond to this discovery no later

than February 15, 2008 and do so without any improper qualifications, such as “based upon

currently available information.” 

With respect to interrogatories 8 and 9, Plaintiff contends that there are no responsive

documents with respect to Innometriks, even though it recently entered into a covenant not to sue

agreement with Innometriks. At the hearing, Plaintiff’s attorney acknowledged not doing any

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1 Cf. Qualcomm Inc. v. Broadcom Corp., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 911 (S.D. Cal. Jan. 7,

2008) (finding discovery misconduct and sanctioning counsel who failed to conduct a reasonable inquiry

into the adequacy of their client’s document search and production: “Thus, the Court finds it likely that

some variation of option four occurred; that is, one or more of the retained lawyers chose not to look

in the correct locations for the correct documents, to accept the unsubstantiated assurances of an

important client that its search was sufficient, to ignore the warning signs that the document search and

production were inadequate, not to press Qualcomm employees for the truth, and/or to encourage

employees to provide the information (or lack of information) that Qualcomm needed to assert its

non-participation argument and to succeed in this lawsuit.”). 

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investigation to determine how negotiations and discussions about the covenant not to sue agreement

were carried out with Innometriks without leaving any paper (or electronic) trail of responsive

documents.1

 Plaintiff shall provide a declaration from the person(s) most knowledgeable affiliated

with Plaintiff’s company, not outside counsel, satisfactorily explaining how this occurred, if it did,

or produce the documents.

In camera review of AML034349

Plaintiff shall provide this document to the Court for an in camera review no later than

January 31, 2008. 

Motions set for hearing on February 5, 2008 and February 12, 2008

On December 18, 2007, Lexar Media filed a Motion to Quash, which was set for hearing on

January 30, 2008 and continued to February 5, 2008. On December 21, 2007, Plaintiff filed a

Motion for Leave to Take Depositions of Third Party Customers, which was set for hearing before

Judge Wilken, who referred the motion to this Court, where it was set for hearing on February 5,

2008. On January 3, 2008, Plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel Deposition of Jeff Lee and Defendant

filed a Motion to Compel Discovery, both set for hearing on February 12, 2008. On January 4,

2008, Plaintiff filed a Motion to Compel and Defendant filed a Motion to Compel Depositions, both

set for hearing on February 12, 2008. 

The parties acknowledged at the January 30, 2008 hearing that, despite the Court’s

December 3, 2007 Order to the contrary, lead counsel had not met and conferred in person prior to

the filing of the motions. Accordingly, all of these motions are denied without prejudice. As stated

in the December 3, 2007 Order, lead counsel shall meet and confer in person regarding any pending

discovery disputes and before filing any future discovery motion. Henceforth, the parties must seek

leave from this Court to file a discovery motion by filing and faxing a joint letter, no longer than two

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pages, setting forth the disputes. The Court’s fax number is 415-522-2002. The letter shall set out

the dispute point by point, with each party’s position following the description of each point. The

Court will decide whether to set a briefing schedule and hearing, and will instruct the parties as to

the format of the briefs. 

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Dated: January 31, 2008 

ELIZABETH D. LAPORTE

United States Magistrate Judge

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