Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-cand-3_12-cv-03733/USCOURTS-cand-3_12-cv-03733-6/pdf.json

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

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ESI ORDER 1 CASE NO. 5:12-cv-03733-EJD

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

SAN JOSE DIVISION

Droplets, Inc.,

Plaintiff,

vs.

Amazon.com, Inc. et al.,

Defendants.

Case No. 5:12-cv-03733-EJD

[PROPOSED] ESI ORDER

The parties, by and through their respective counsel of record, stipulate that the 

following ESI Order shall apply in the above-captioned action, subject to approval and entry

by the Court:

1. PURPOSE

This Order will govern discovery of electronically stored information (“ESI”) in this 

case as a supplement to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, this Court’s Guidelines for the 

Discovery of Electronically Stored Information, and any other applicable orders and rules. 

*E-FILED: February 28, 2013*

Case 3:12-cv-03733-JST Document 250 Filed 02/28/13 Page 1 of 6
ESI ORDER 2 CASE NO. 5:12-cv-03733-EJD

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2. COOPERATION

The parties are aware of the importance the Court places on cooperation and commit to 

cooperate in good faith throughout the matter consistent with this Court’s Guidelines for the 

Discovery of ESI.

3. LIAISON

The parties will identify liaisons to each other who are and will be knowledgeable 

about and responsible for discussing their respective ESI. Each e-discovery liaison will be, or 

have access to those who are, knowledgeable about the technical aspects of e-discovery, 

including the location, nature, accessibility, format, collection, search methodologies, and 

production of ESI in this matter. The parties will rely on the liaisons, as needed, to confer 

about ESI and to help resolve disputes without court intervention.

4. PRESERVATION

The parties have discussed their preservation obligations and needs and agree that 

preservation of potentially relevant ESI will be reasonable and proportionate. To reduce the 

costs and burdens of preservation and to ensure proper ESI is preserved, the parties agree that: 

a) Only ESI created, received, and maintained in the ordinary course of business 

between September 2005 and September 2011 will be preserved1; however, if a 

party is aware of sources of ESI which pre-date September 2005 that may be 

relevant to this case (e.g. Yahoo!’s reliance upon internally-developed prior art, or 

information related to Droplets’ conception and reduction to practice of the patentsin-suit), the parties shall first identify such sources of ESI, and thereafter discuss a 

plan to ensure that such ESI is also preserved;

b) The parties will exchange a list of the types of ESI they believe should be preserved 

and the custodians, or general job titles or descriptions of custodians, for whom they

believe ESI should be preserved, e.g., “HR head,” “scientist,” and “marketing 

manager.” The parties shall add or remove custodians as reasonably necessary;

c) After exchanging the lists called for in (b), the parties will agree on the number of 

custodians per party for whom ESI will be preserved, but in no event will the 

number of custodians exceed 20 per party without agreement by the parties or a 

showing of good cause;

 

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In no event does the agreement to preserve documents from this time period obligate a party to 

search or produce such documents without a reasonable request for such ESI. 

Case 3:12-cv-03733-JST Document 250 Filed 02/28/13 Page 2 of 6
ESI ORDER 3 CASE NO. 5:12-cv-03733-EJD

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d) Notwithstanding the limitation of 20 ESI custodians per party set forth in section 

4(c), the parties also agree that the following persons, to the extent not already

identified as an ESI custodian, will be ESI custodians: (i) any current or former 

employee of a party, who appears on the trial witness list for that party (excepting 

trial witnesses offered purely for document authentication purposes); and (ii) any

person designed by a party to provide Rule 30(b)(6) deposition testimony.

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e) Absent agreement of the parties or a showing of good cause, these data sources are 

not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. 

P. 26(b)(2)(B) and ESI from these sources will not be preserved (unless maintained 

in the ordinary course of business), searched, reviewed, or produced absent 

agreement or cost-shifting: (1) backup media created before September 2005, (2) 

systems no longer in use that cannot be accessed, (3) voicemails, text messages, 

and (4) portable devices (e.g., Blackberries, iPhones, etc.).

5. SEARCH

The parties agree that in responding to an initial Fed. R. Civ. P. 34 request, or earlier if 

appropriate, they will meet and confer about methods to search ESI in order to identify ESI 

that is subject to production in discovery and filter out ESI that is not subject to discovery. 

Specifically, the parties have discussed and agreed to an ESI search plan whereby the parties 

will:

(1) Generate a proposed list of search terms that the producing party proposes to use to 

search its ESI for relevant documents;

(2) Share the proposed list of search terms with the opposing party, to allow the parties 

to discuss modifications or additions to the list of proposed search terms;

(3) After the parties agree upon a list of proposed search terms, the list of terms will be 

run by the producing party against the producing party’s ESI to generate a list of “hit 

counts” by term (i.e. the number of documents that correspond to each search term):

(4) The parties will share the list of “hit counts” with each other, in order to allow the 

parties to work together to identify search terms that may be overbroad (identified an 

unreasonably large number of documents) or underbroad (identified an unreasonably 

low number of documents); and

 

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The parties further agree that for any third-party trial fact witness not identified in a party’s 

initial disclosures at least 60 days prior to the close of fact discovery, the parties may serve Rule 

45 subpoenas on such third-parties after the close of fact discovery and before trial. This 

agreement is to ensure that any such third-party trial witness has their ESI searched and produced 

prior to trial.

Case 3:12-cv-03733-JST Document 250 Filed 02/28/13 Page 3 of 6
ESI ORDER 4 CASE NO. 5:12-cv-03733-EJD

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(5) After the exchange of hit counts, the parties will refine their list of search terms, 

and will work iteratively to exchange refined lists of search terms and hit counts, no 

more than five times, to identify the documents that the producing party will ultimately

produce to the requesting party. 

Further, the parties agree to limit their ESI requests to a total of 50 search terms per 

custodian per party; however, additional search terms may be added by agreement by the 

parties or upon a showing of good cause. For avoidance of doubt, closely related terms 

grouped by logical operators (e.g. “Mike Smith” or “M. Smith” but not “Michael Smith”) will 

be considered as one search term. A disjunctive combination of multiple words or phrases 

(e.g., “computer” or “system”) broadens the search, and thus each word or phrase shall count 

as a separate search term unless they are variants of the same word or closely related terms.

6. PRODUCTION FORMATS

The parties agree to produce documents in (1) PDF, (2) TIFF, (3) native and/or (4) 

paper (or a combination thereof), at the election of the producing party. If particular documents 

warrant a different format, the parties will cooperate to arrange for the mutually acceptable 

production of such documents. The parties agree not to degrade the searchability of documents 

as part of the document production process.

7. PHASING

When a party propounds discovery requests pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 34, the parties 

agree to phase the production of ESI in a reasonable and appropriate manner as agreed on by

the parties. Following the initial production, the parties will continue to prioritize the order of 

subsequent productions.

8. DOCUMENTS PROTECTED FROM DISCOVERY

a) Pursuant to Fed. R. Evid. 502(d), the production of a privileged or work-productprotected document, whether inadvertent or otherwise, is not a waiver of privilege 

or protection from discovery in this case or in any other federal or state proceeding. 

For example, the mere production of privileged or work-product-protected 

documents in this case as part of a mass production is not itself a waiver in this case 

or in any other federal or state proceeding.

b) Communications involving trial counsel that post-date the filing of the complaint 

need not be placed on a privilege log. Communications may be identified on a 

privilege log by category, rather than individually, if appropriate. 

Case 3:12-cv-03733-JST Document 250 Filed 02/28/13 Page 4 of 6
ESI ORDER 5 CASE NO. 5:12-cv-03733-EJD

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9. MODIFICATION

This Stipulated Order may be modified by a Stipulated Order of the parties or by the 

Court for good cause shown.

IT IS SO STIPULATED, through Counsel of Record.

DATED: February 25, 2013 /s/ Courtland L. Reichman (w/ permission)

Courtland L. Reichman

MCKOOL SMITH HENNIGAN, P.C.

255 Shoreline Drive, Suite 510

Redwood Shores, CA 94065

Tel: (650) 394-1401

Fax: (650) 551-9901

Josh W. Budwin

Texas State Bar No. 24050347

jbudwin@mckoolsmith.com

James E. Quigley

Texas State Bar No. 24075810

jquigley@mckoolsmith.com

MCKOOL SMITH, P.C.

300 West Sixth Street, Suite 1700

Austin, Texas 78701

Tel: (512) 692-8700

Fax: (512) 692-8744

ATTORNEYS FOR PLAINTIFF

DROPLETS, INC.

DATED: February 25, 2013 /s/ Jeffrey G. Homrig

Jennifer Haltom Doan

(admitted pro hac vice)

Texas Bar No. 08809050

Joshua R. Thane

(admitted pro hac vice)

Texas Bar No. 24060713

Shawn Alexander Latchford

(admitted pro hac vice)

Texas Bar No. 24066603

HALTOM & DOAN

6500 Summerhill Road, Suite 100

Case 3:12-cv-03733-JST Document 250 Filed 02/28/13 Page 5 of 6
ESI ORDER 6 CASE NO. 5:12-cv-03733-EJD

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Texarkana, TX 75503

Telephone: (903) 255-1000

Facsimile: (903) 255-0800

Email: jdoan@haltomdoan.com

Email: jthane@haltomdoan.com

Email: slatchford@haltomdoan.com

David J. Ball, Jr.

(admitted pro hac vice)

PAUL,WEISS, RIFKIND,WHARTON

& GARRISON LLP

2001 K Street, NW

Washington, DC 20006-1047

Telephone: (202) 223-7300

Email: dball@paulweiss.com

Jennifer H. Wu

(admitted pro hac vice)

Erin Wiggins

(admitted pro hac vice)

PAUL,WEISS, RIFKIND,WHARTON

& GARRISON LLP

1285 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10019-6064

Telephone: (212) 373-3000

Facsimile: (212) 757-3990

Email: jwu@paulweiss.com

Email: erwiggins@paulweiss.com

Jeffrey G. Homrig

KASOWITZ BENSON TORRES

& FRIEDMAN LLP

333 Twin Dolphin Dr., Suite 200

Redwood shores, CA 94065

Telephone: (650) 453-5170

Facsimile: (650) 453-5171

Email: jhomrig@kasowitz.com

ATTORNEYS FOR DEFENDANT

YAHOO! INC.

PURSUANT TO STIPULATION, IT IS SO ORDERED.

DATED: ________________________ _____________________________________

THE HONORABLE EDWARD J. DAVILA

United States District Judge

February 28, 2013 Hon. Howard R. Lloyd, United States Magistrate Judge

Case 3:12-cv-03733-JST Document 250 Filed 02/28/13 Page 6 of 6