Chicago IP Attorney & Lawyer : R. David Donoghue : Chicago IP Litigation Blog

Bone Care Int'l, LLC v. Pentech Pharm., Inc., No. 08 C 1083, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Sep. 30, 2010) (Dow, J.).

Judge Dow decided the parties motions in limine in this patent infringement dispute. Of particular note, the Court made the following rulings:
 

• The Court allowed defendants' anticipation and written description invalidity defenses even though they were not properly disclosed or supported in defendants' interrogatory responses or expert reports. The anticipation defense was so intertwined with the disclosed obviousness defense that there was no prejudice. And the parties argued the written description defense as part of a summary judgment motion. The Court, however, excluded other undisclosed invalidity defenses.
   
• The Court allowed plaintiffs to present evidence regarding the priority date of one of its claims became there was a question of fact as to whether the claim had priority based upon an earlier, related application.
   
• Plaintiffs were allowed to call defendants' expert witnesses in plaintiffs' case-in-chief so long as the testimony was not just cumulative. Plaintiffs could also call defendants' experts. Even if defendants chose not to call them Defendants cannot turn an expert into a non-testifying expert pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(4)(B), once the expert issued a report and was listed on defendants' witness list.
   
• A parties' witnesses should be called live whenever possible, unless the witness is unavailable.
   
• Defendants' expert was allowed to add references after the expert report deadline and after his deposition, by identifying the references in a deposition errata sheet and in corrected expert report pages. The references did not significantly change the experts analysis. And plaintiffs questioned the expert about the references during his deposition. So, plaintiffs were not prejudiced.
   
• Defendants were also allowed to rely upon their experts' rebuttal and supplemental reports became the arguments in the reports all properly responded to Plaintiffs' reports.

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Bone Care Int'l, LLC v. Pentech Pharms., Inc., No. 08 C 1083, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Sep. 30, 2010) (Dow, J.)

Judge Dow issued an Order resolving the parties' dispute in the pre-trial joint status report regarding the order of proofs at trial, in light of defendants' stipulation of infringement. The Court ordered that:

1.  Defendant would present its burden of proof evidence regarding invalidity first, citing Howard T. Markey, On Simplifying Patent Trials, 116 F.R.D. 369 (1987). 
    
2. Plaintiffs will then respond to defendants' invalidity case and present evidence of any secondary considerations. 
    
3. Defendants will then be allowed to respond to the secondary consideration proofs and rebut, as appropriate, plaintiffs' validity proofs. 
    
4. Plaintiffs will be allowed a rebuttal case regarding its secondary consideration. 

The Court noted, however, that it would use its broad discretion pursuant to Fed. R. Evid. 611(a) to prevent either party from sandbagging the other with its respective rebuttal case.

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Bone Care Int’l, LLC v. Pentech Pharma., Inc., No. 08 C 1083, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. June 4, 2010) (Dow. J.)

Judge Dow construed the claims in this patent infringement action related to methods for preventing bone mass loss using vitamin D. As an initial matter, the Court held that the person of ordinary skill in the court was someone in the field of kidney disease with either a Ph.D. or an M.D., adopting plaintiffs’ construction. Defendants’ argued that both a Ph.D. and an M.D. were required, but the parties agreed that the definition did not impact their respective arguments. Of particular interest, the Court construed the following terms:

• The Court declined to construe “lowering” or “lowered” because the parties did not contest that the constructions impacted claim scope, and their ordinary meanings were sufficient.
   
• “Serum parathyroid hormone” was construed as “blood concentrations of parathyroid hormone.”
   
• “Suffer from” was construed as “having” consistent with its ordinary meaning. The dictionary drew a distinction between suffering from and suffering with, which is associated with pain or discomfort from a condition.
   
• “Hyperparathyroidism” was construed consistent with medical dictionaries as “increased (i.e., above normal) secretion of PTH by the parathyroid gland."
   
• “End stage renal disease” was construed as “a disease wherein the patients’ kidneys no longer function at a level necessary to sustain life and thus require chronic dialysis or kidney transplantation.”
   
• “Effective Amount” was construed as “an effective amount of 1a-OH-vitamin D2 to lower and maintain lowered blood concentrations of PTH with a lower incidence of hypercalcemia than is associated with the extant conventional Vitamin D3 treatments.”

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Bone Care Int'l, LLC v. Pentech Pharms., Inc., No. 08 C 1083, Slip Op. (N.D. Ill. Apr. 23, 2010) (Dow, Jr.).

Judge Dow granted in part plaintiffs' motion to dismiss plaintiff's inequitable conduct affirmative defenses and corresponding counterclaim in this patent case related to a treatment for hyperthyroidism. The Court dismissed defendants' defenses and claims based upon infectious unenforceability. Defendants showed a relationship between the patents-in-suit and the earlier patents. But defendants did not meet the Fed.R.Civ.P. 9(b) pleading standards because they did not plead an "immediate and necessary" relationship between the patents-in-suit and the earlier patents in the family.

The Court denied the motion to dismiss as to prior art references that had been disclosed in earlier, related patent prosecutions, but not the prosecutions of the patents-in-suit. Defendants' allegations were sufficient to allow the Court to infer that the prior art references were intentionally withheld to avoid rejections similar to those from the earlier prosecutions based upon that prior art. It did not matter that defendants did not allege that the prior art references were not cumulative. Rule 9(b) pleading is designed to put the opposing part on notice, not to require the recitation of "certain magic words." The Court dismissed defendants' allegations regarding allegedly false statements to the PTO because other writings requested the applicant did not believe the statements to be false. 

Defendants' allegations regarding certain of plaintiffs' undisclosed articles were sufficiently plead. Defendants identified specific articles written by patentee, and plead that they were relevant and that patentee failed to disclose them. 

Finally, defendants sufficiently pled that plaintiff's submitted article made misleading statements about the state of the art. Among other reasons, the Court noted that the truth of the contested statements could not be decided upon a motion to dismiss. 

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