Rosenthal Collins Group, LLC v. Trading Techs. Int’l, Inc., No. 05 C 4088, 2007 WL 844610 (N.D. Ill. Mar. 14, 2007) (Moran, Sen. J.).*

Judge Moran denied in part and granted in part declaratory judgment defendant Trading Technologies’ ("TT") Rule 37 motion for sanctions.  The Court held that declaratory judgment plaintiff Rosenthal Collins Group’s ("RCG") motion for summary judgment of invalidity was "somewhat misleading" and possibly "disingenuous," but refused to dismiss the case.  Instead the Court struck the declaration underlying RCG’s motion, denied RCG’s summary judgment motion with leave to refile a motion "supported by proper evidence" and awarded TT its costs and attorneys fees associated with the Rule 37 motion, as well as its software expert’s fees.  RCG filed a summary judgment motion arguing that TT’s patents covering "double click" methods for executing an electronic trade were anticipated by the alleged prior art system "Wit DSM" as embodied in a software package RCG presented to the Court and TT on a laptop and claimed was essentially the software as it is existed more than one year prior to TT’s patent filing.  TT’s software expert identified that several lines of code had been added to the software by RCG’s declarant, and that the added code performed certain functionalities required for anticipation.  When RCG’s declarant was deposed, he stated that he had not written the "double click" portion of the original code and could not be sure that it was in the alleged prior art version of the WIT DSM.  These facts did not warrant dismissal of the case or barring of any evidence because RCG and its declarant had not made any false statements, although they had made deliberately vague statements.  Furthermore, while RCG did not identify that the software package included added code which the Court found disturbing, it did include a comparison program on the laptop it provided to TT and the Court which would have identified the added code.

This case involves the several of the same patents as the other TT case before Judge Moran.