NEW YORK, February 1, 2012 -- In the December 20, 2011 issue of IP Law360, firm lawyer Jeffrey Sullivan discussed how the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are based on the fundamental proposition that litigation should be “administered to secure the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of every action and proceeding.”

Patent litigation, however, is typically far from inexpensive, and efforts to avoid or ameliorate the expense of litigation may, some fear, often drive the result of litigation as much as or more than an objective determination of justice.

The primary contributing factor to the expense of patent cases today is in many instances related to discovery and production of electronic documents and data. For some years, commentators have suggested that overbroad and unnecessary e-discovery can multiply the total cost of a patent defense by a factor of three or more.

At a recently convened conference of the Eastern District of Texas Bench Bar Conference, the Federal Circuit Advisory Council unanimously adopted a proposed “Model Order on E-Discovery in Patent Cases” (the “model order”), which, if widely implemented by district courts in patent litigation, could potentially go a long way toward curtailing the runaway costs of e-discovery production in patent cases.

The complete IP Law360 article is available here.

Jeffrey Sullivan’s bio is available here.


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