Trading Techs. Int’l., Inc. v. eSpeed, Inc., No. 05 C 4120, (N.D. Ill. May 16, 2007) (Moran, Sen. J.).

Judge Moran granted in part and denied in part plaintiff Trading Technologies’ ("TT") motion to compel additional production from defendants GL Consultants, Inc. and GL Trade SA (collectively "GL").  The Court required GL to update certain interrogatory responses and to produce documents based upon an earlier priority date that GL had argued for, as opposed to stopping at the later priorit date alleged by TT.  The Court also required GL to provide TT access to original source code and certain electronic archives, without regard to whether TT had provided GL similar access.  Finally, the Court denied TT’s request to lower the confidentiality designation of the source code for GL’s "GL Tradepad" software.  But what is most interesting about the Court’s opinion is its reminder to the parties about how the Court expects them to conduct discovery:

At the outset, we reiterate some of the points regarding discovery that we have stressed throughout this complicated and contentious litigation. First, parties should err on the side of over-production; relevance should be argued sparingly. Second, counsel are officers of the court and their word is generally sufficient. Third, there will always be additional persons to interview, additional documents to discover, and alleged prior art to be found; we must, however, put an end to discovery at some point. . . . With such guidelines in mind, we address the current dispute.

* Because Westlaw has not published this opinion yet, here is a copy of Judge Moran’s original, signed opinion.