Thomas & Thomas Court Reporters - Court Reporters, Remote Depositions, Trial Presentation Services

SERVICES:  Trial Presentation Services, Trial Technician, and PowerPoint Creation

CASE CAPTION:  CENTRIPETAL NETWORKS, INC., Plaintiff, v. CISCO SYSTEMS, INC., Defendant.; Civil Action No. 2:18cv94

CASE TYPE:  Rule 63 retrial

COURT:  UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA, Norfolk Division

LOCATION:  Norfolk, VA

JUDGE:  U.S. District Judge Elizabeth W. Hanes

LAW FIRMS:  Kramer Levin (Plaintiff) and Duane Morris (Defendant)

OVERVIEW:  Provided trial technician to display exhibits and PowerPoints at the trial.  Worked with tutorialist expert and client to fine-tune PowerPoint slides.  Used OnCue to create callouts and highlights of exhibits for use in PowerPoint.

UNIQUE ASPECT OF TRIAL:  The background of this case is unique in and of itself.  In 2020, Judge Morgan found that Cisco owed Centripetal $1.9B for patent infringement.  Just before issuing said finding, Judge Morgan informed the parties he had learned that his wife had just under $5,000 in Cisco stock.  On appeal, Cisco argued and won that the judgement should be vacated due to the Cisco stock.  The $1.9B was the largest patent infringement verdict in US history.

At the retrial, the unique aspect was definitely the limited amount of evidence presented.  Because this was being tried under Rule 63, each party only presented a tutorialist on the technology and then did closing arguments.  Initially, there were going to be several additional witnesses; however, those witnesses were scratched at the last second.  As noted above, this was a new judge,  but Judge Hanes did a great job with the technology and facts of this case.  She was prepared and attentive throughout the trial.

RESULT:  This was a bench trial and no Order has been issued.  This blog will be updated once an Order is issued. 

SERVICES:  Trial Presentation Services, Trial Technician, A/V Equipment Rental, and PowerPoint Creation

CASE CAPTION:  NexStep, Inc. v. Comcast Cable Communications, LLC; 1:19-CV-01031

CASE TYPE:  Patent Infringement

COURT:  United States District Court for the District of Delaware

JUDGE:  Judge Richard G. Andrews

LAW FIRMS:  Kramer Levin (NextStep) and WilmerHale (Comcast)

OVERVIEW:  Providing trial technician to display exhibits, PowerPoints, and video depositions at trial.  Thomas & Thomas was also responsible for some of the A/V equipment and ensuring all the A/V equipment was setup correctly.

UNIQUE ASPECT OF TRIAL:  There were two unique aspects to this trial.  The first was that the Judge did not allow our team to put on a damages case.  Thus, our entire presentation was devoted to infringement and validity.  The other unique aspect of the trial was the courtroom was not completely wired like federal courtrooms normally are.  Here, we had to bring in a projector and connect it in such a way that both sides could black out the signal when displaying evidence that had not been admitted.  This is especially important in patent litigation, as there are voluminous amounts of exhibits and using physical copies to admit evidence would be burdensome and time consuming.  Normally, the courtroom is wired in a way that the Court controls what is shown to the jury and is not a responsibility of the parties.          

RESULT:  Infringement.  The jury issued a verdict finding Comcast’s Xfinity brand app indirectly infringed NexStep’s patent for a way of turning a remote control into a customer service “concierge device,” but cleared Comcast of claims of infringing a related patent.