Source: https://patentlaw.jmbm.com/2013/12/district-court-declines-to-vac.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 17:18:59+00:00

Document:
After Single Touch Interactive, Inc. (“Single Touch”) and Zoove Corporation (“Zoove”) reached a settlement in their patent infringement action, both parties filed a stipulated motion to vacate the district court’s previous claim construction order. The parties’ settlement agreement provided that they would jointly request that the district court vacate the claim construction order.
In analyzing the parties’ joint request, the district court began by focusing on the United State Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. Bancorp Mortgage Co. v. Bonner Mall P’ship, 513 U.S. 18 (1994) where “the Supreme Court held that appellate court vacatur of district court judgments in the context of settlement agreements should be granted only in ‘exceptional circumstances,’ which ‘do not include the mere fact that the settlement agreement provides for vacatur.’ The Supreme Court emphasized the public interests at stake in considering a request to vacate an order or judgment of the court, stating that ‘[j]udicial precedents are presumptively correct and valuable to the legal community as a whole… not merely the property of private litigants[,] and should stand unless a court concludes that the public interest would be served by a vacatur.’ Id. at 26 (quoting Izumi Seimitsu Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha v. U.S. Philips Corp., 510 U.S. 27, 40 (1993) (Stevens, J., dissenting)).
The district court then stated that due to the “fact-intensive nature of the inquiry required,” district courts exercise “greater equitable discretion when reviewing [their] own judgments than do appellate courts operating at a distance.” American Games, Inc. v. Trade Products, Inc.,142 F.3d 1164, 1170 (9th Cir.1998). Therefore, a district court in this circuit, even in the context of mootness by settlement, may vacate one of its own judgments absent exceptional circumstances. Id. at 1168-69. The proper standard is the “equitable balancing test,” which balances the hardships of the parties and the public interests at stake. Id. at 1166; Zinus, Inc. v. Simmons Bedding Co., No. C 07-3012 PVT, 2008 WL 1847183, at *1 (N.D.Cal. Apr. 23, 2008). The standard for vacatur of a non-final, interlocutory order is even less rigid. See Persistence Software, Inc. v. Object People, Inc., 200 F.R.D. 626, 627 (N.D.Cal.2001) (comparing Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b), governing vacatur of nonfinal orders, to Rule 60(b), governing vacatur of final judgments). Nevertheless, courts consider a number of factors in deciding whether vacatur is appropriate, including collateral estoppel effect, the parties’ settlement incentives, public ownership of judicial decisions, and expenditure of courts’ resources. Cf. RE2CON, LLC v. Telfer Oil Co., 2:10-CV-00786-KJM, 2013 WL 1325183 (E.D. Cal. Mar. 29, 2013); Cisco Systems v. Telcordia Tech., Inc., 590 F.Supp.2d 828 (E.D. Tex. 2008); Zinus, 2008 WL 1847183 at *1-2.
Accordingly, the district court found that the public’s interest in the decision and the conservation of judicial resources weighed in favor of denying the motion to vacate.

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