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

According to Chief Judge Holderman during the annual state of the Northern District speech, the state of the Northern District is "good" -- click here for the Northern District's statement regarding the speech.  The Northern District was briefly at full capacity, between Judge Dow's appointment to the Northern District and Judge Filip's resignation to join the Department of Justice.  Other highlights of the presentation included:

• The Northern District remains in the top ten districts in terms of median time to civil case disposition at 6.2 months.
  
• Magistrate Judges Brown and Mahoney were reappointed to additional eight year terms; and
  
• The Northern District's 2007 civil case load remained nearly constant, falling only .5% from its 2006 level.

The Northern District's steady civil case load is especially impressive in light of the Seventh Circuit's reduced case load in 2007.  The Chicago Tribune's Ameet Sachdev reported -- click here for the story -- that the Seventh Circuit's Chief Judge Easterbrook, during his state of the Seventh Circuit speech, reported that the Seventh Circuit's case load dropped 10% for the second year in a row.  Sachdev noted that federal appellate court case loads had averaged a 5% drop per year since 2000.  And Easterbrook explained the Seventh Circuit's 10% drop for 2007 as based upon two primary factors:

• The Seventh Circuit's district courts saw an overall 6% drop in their case loads; and
  
• The Seventh Circuit's preference for bright line rules over totality of the circumstance tests made it easier for entities to settle their disputes, saying:

Rules make it easier for private parties to avoid litigation, or settle their disputes, without asking for appellate evaluation in every case.

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The Northern District of Illinois and Chicago's Federal Bar Association chapter are hosting their Ninth Annual Awards for Excellence in Pro Bono and Public Interest Service awards program this Tuesday, May 13 beginning at 3:30 pm in the James Benton Parsons Memorial Courtroom (2525) of the Dirksen United States Courthouse at 219 South Dearborn Street. The program is open to everyone and is free of charge.

The keynote speaker will be William Neukom, the President of the ABA and partner in K&L Gates.  Prior to his private practice, Neukom was executive vice president of Law and Corporate Affairs for
Microsoft, where he managed Microsoft’s legal, government affairs and philanthropic
activities.

Seven “Awards for Excellence in Pro Bono and Public Interest Service” and one “Special
Recognition Award for Public Interest Service” will be presented to the following Chicago-area lawyers for their pro bono and public interest work before the Northern District:

• Sara C. Arroyo and Rosa M. Tumialán, of Dykema Gossett PLLC (presented by the Judge Coar);
  
• Anthony J. Masciopinto, of Kulwin, Masciopinto & Kulwin, LLP (presented by Judge Manning);
  
• Myron Mackoff, of Richardson & Mackoff (presented by the Chief Judge Holderman and Magistrate Judge Valdez);
  
• Joshua D. Lee and Amy M. Rubenstein, of Schiff Hardin LLP (presented by the
  Judge Brown);
  
• Catherine Caporusso and Margot Klein, of the Federal District Court's Self-Help Assistance Program (presented by Judge Hibbler);
  
• David A. Gordon, Michael B. Nadler, and Kristen R. Seeger, of Sidley Austin LLP (presented
  by Magistrate Judge Schenkier);
  
• Lisa R. Kane, of Lisa Kane & Associates, PC (presented by Chief Judge Holderman); and
  
• Richard J. Gonzales, Clinical Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent (presented by Chief Judge Holderman).

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Magistrate Judges Geraldine Soat Brown and P. Michael Mahoney were each reappointed for an additional eight year term -- click here for the Northern District's press release.*    Judge Brown's reappointment was for her second 8-year term. 

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Here is some recent Northern District news:

• Judge Coar recently updated his case management procedures (click here to read them) to state that pursuant to Local Rule 5.2(e), parties are no longer to provide courtesy copies of electronically filed papers to Judge Coar's chambers, except for papers pertaining to Fed. R. Civ. P. 56 or Local Rule 56.1 (summary judgment papers).
  
• Magistrate Judges Brown (Eastern Division -- Chicago) and Mahoney (Western Division -- Rockford) are both up for reappointment in early 2008.  Pursuant to federal law, the Court has established a citizen's panel to consider their reappointments.  Members of the bar, as well as the general public, are requested to forward comments regarding the reappointments no later than January 18, 2008, to:

Magistrate Judge Advisory Panel
c/o Mr. Michael W. Dobbins
Clerk of Court
U.S. District Court
219 South Dearborn St. -- Rm. 2050
Chicago, IL 60604

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Abbott Labs. v. Andrx Pharms., Inc., No. 05 C 1490, 2007 WL 551551 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 20, 2007) (Brown, Mag. J.).*

The Court denied defendant's motion to compel production of attorney-client privileged documents pursuant to the crime-fraud exception.  Defendant argued that plaintiff's failure to disclose full results from two studies with conflicting results (for and against the applications' claims) to the USPTO, both of which were material to the claims, was both inequitable conduct and fraud.  The studies were conducted during the pendency of one application and prior to two others.  Additionally, three of the named inventors co-authored a journal article detailing the results.  And during her deposition, prosecution counsel admitted being aware of the studies during prosecution of the applications.  The Court held that the evidence warranted in camera review of selected documents from plaintiff's privilege log to determine whether there was evidence of intent.  But after its review, the Court found no direct evidence of intent to defraud the USPTO.  The Court noted that "[n]one of the documents . . . contained a 'smoking gun' or anything close to it."  Furthermore, while intent can be inferred based upon circumstantial evidence, there most be more evidence than failure to disclose to support the inference. 

* You can see more on this case, in particular, various preliminary injunction opinions here and here.

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Abbott Labs. V. Andrx Pharm., Inc., No. 05 C 1490, 2006 WL 2092377 (N.D. Ill. July 25, 2006) (Brown, Mag. J.).

Using nonprivileged documents that are connected to privileged documents, such as fax coversheets or cover emails used to send a privileged report, to question a witness regarding the related privileged documents can waive the privilege.  Applying Seventh Circuit law (the privilege questions at issue are unrelated to substantive patent law, so Federal Circuit law does not apply), the Court held that plaintiff Abbott waived privilege with respect to an entire document where:  1) Abbott produced a fax coversheet from a document over which it had claimed attorney-client and work product privilege; and 2) used that cover sheet in a line of questioning regarding the underlying document, despite Abbott’s decision not to produce the underlying document.

There are several useful practice tips to draw from this case. First:  fax cover sheets that do not contain separately privileged information are generally not privileged themselves. Of course, there are exceptions and nuances to this general rule, but I suspect that many litigators claim privilege over coversheets that have no more information on them than what must be included in the privilege log anyway. In this case, the remainder of the fax was a marked-up copy of a patent application at issue in the case, but the cover sheet made no mention of the substance or title of the included document and, therefore, the cover sheet itself was not privileged.

At the beginning of my career a wise attorney  -- David Callahan of Kirkland & Ellis -- told me that privilege logs should be reviewed by at least two attorneys before they are finalized. He also drilled into me that you should never simply push the task of logging privileged documents to the youngest associate on a case. Privilege decisions are complicated and the ramifications from privilege log mistakes can be very serious. As the youngest associate on all of my cases at the time, I was thrilled by his sage advice, and I have become more convinced of it over time.

The final practice tip:  you must make all of your arguments. Attorneys tend to focus their arguments only on either the attorney-client privilege or the work product privilege, excluding the other. In this case, Abbott alleged that the document was protected by both work product and attorney-client privilege, but did not bother proving that the document was work product. The Court noted that waiver of attorney-client privilege does not automatically waive work product protection, and did not address work product protection because Abbott had not made its case as to work product.

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