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

The Northern District has posted the Seventh Circuit's new proposed pattern jury instructions for patent cases on its website -- click here for a copy.  The instructions include all of the recent revisions to the patent laws, including KSR and Seagate. The Seventh Circuit requested comments on the instructions be sent to:

Chief Judge Robert L. Miller, Jr.
robert_miller@innd.uscourts.gov
325 Robert A. Grant Federal Building
204 S. Main St.
South Bend, IN 46601

Comments will be accepted until April 1st.  Also, below is my list of IP jury instructions by Northern District judge, I am sure we will start to see some new ones soon in light of the turbulent 18 months patent law has had:

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Judge Nolan compelled defendant to provide complete answers, citing specific individuals, documents and things to plaintiff's fact-based contention interrogatories.  Plaintiff served defendant with contention interrogatory seeking to learn each basis for each of defendant's defenses and counterclaims relating to plaintiff's "ULTRA-LITE" and "Monster Tachometer" marks.  Defendant initially provided broad, non-committal answers and eventually supplemented including general statements directing plaintiff to defendant's document production without specifying any Bates ranges.

The Court noted that contention interrogatories force parties to commit to positions and to back the positions up with supporting facts.  Because fact discovery was closed, the Court ordered defendant to provide detailed answers including identifying specific documents it was relying upon. 

The Court did not compel defendant to provide the same detailed responses to plaintiff's contention interrogatories seeking all expert opinions to be relied upon because expert discovery was not yet closed.  The Court noted that the expert disclosures were properly addressed using the Court ordered expert discovery schedule.

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Crafting proposed jury instructions is one of the first steps when preparing for trial.  And one of the first steps in drafting those instructions is looking for pattern or sample instructions that the court has previously used or endorsed.  In order to help speed that process, I am adding a new Blog feature.  I have gathered the jury instructions that each of the Northern District judges identify on their respective  web pages as either form or model instructions.  Most have general civil instructions and a few have specific sample instructions for various types of IP suits.

This list should save you time when you are looking for model instructions, but I would like to make it even more useful. If you have a set of instructions used in a Northern District IP case send them to me and I will add those instructions to the list (either anonymously or with credit to the sender, at the sender's discretion). 

So, send me your jury instructions -- chicagoiplitigation@yahoo.com -- and the name of the judge that presided over the trial.  As I receive new instructions, I will add them to this post.  If I get a large response, I will do additional posts on the instructions or create a separate page where you can access the files.

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