每日IP英文第390期：
人们都说中国知识产权侵权诉讼取证难，而美国似乎就没有这一问题。
这是因为两国诉讼制度的巨大差异导致的。按照美国法律规定，案件当事人都要提供与案件相关的证据，包括电子证据，如果因为当事人未采取适当的措施而不能提供电子证据，就会受到不利推定的制裁。
在本案中，法院发现被告在原告起诉几年前，就在为这一诉讼做准备，被告有意出台了删除邮件的政策，使得与诉讼有关的邮件都被删除了。按照美国的法律，作为对被告这种行为的惩罚，法院指示陪审团，让陪审团认为删除的邮件都是对被告不利的邮件，特别是被告是否是故意侵权，而且，作为制裁，被告也不能使用庭前调查的任何内容进行不侵权抗辩或无效专利。
本案给美国企业重要的警醒，同时，对于进入美国市场的中国企业也非常具有警示作用。进入美国市场，就要遵守美国的游戏规则，注意管理和保留公司的各类文件和数据，这被认为是一个合法企业最基本的规范。
Sanctions for Deleting Pre-Lawsuit EmailsNovember 3, 2020 | Patently-O - Dennis CrouchThe court issued an important short-opinion, In re Ivantis, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2020), that should be read and considered as a case-study by in-house counsel. The case involves pre-lawsuit destruction of evidence.The basic setup is that Ivantis has a corporate email-destruction-policy* of deleting emails that are 12-months old. Glaukos sued Ivantis for infringement in April 2018 and served the defendant with the Summons and Complaint on April 16, 2018. On April 19, 2018 the company instituted an internal “litigation hold” that suspended the deletion-policy for emails potentially related to the lawsuit. It turns out that Ivantis has been preparing for this litigation and considering work-arounds for Glaukos patents since at least 2013, and all those emails were deleted.The district court found that Ivantis actually anticipated the litigation and that the email deletion constituted improper spoliation under FRCP 37(e) . As a penalty, the court found that the jury should be given an adverse inference instruction, focusing on willfulness:
Ivantis intentionally deleted and failed to preserve relevant evidence for this litigation. Ivantis anticipated patent infringement litigation from Glaukos, but nonetheless adopted and maintained a policy that deleted all company email after 12 months, resulting in the destruction of virtually all emails at Ivantis that pre-date April 2017, including emails specifically relating to the Glaukos Asserted Patents. You may presume from that destruction that the destroyed evidence was favorable to Glaukos and unfavorable to Ivantis, including on the issue of whether Ivantis willfully infringed the Asserted Patents.
Glaukos adverse inference order. The district court also awarded “a sanction prohibiting Ivantis from referring to any pre-suit investigation of the Asserted Patents as a basis for believing that it did not infringe or that the patents were invalid.”On mandamus, the Federal Circuit has refused to take the case – finding that the decision was not “so patently unreasonable as to warrant mandamus.” Ivantis argued that immediate appeal was important because “a massive damages judgment and an injunction against sales of Ivantis’s only product will cast a dark shadow over the company, threatening its ability to grow at this critical juncture in its development—even if Ivantis were to obtain a stay and ultimately prevails on appeal.” The Federal Circuit noted that argument, but found it unconvincing: “we are not prepared to depart from the usual practice of waiting until after final judgment to review such orders based on such speculation.”I should note here that this case has more red-flags than the typical email-retention issue.
- Both companies are competing in the narrow field of FDA-approved stent-treatments for glaucoma.
- As early as 2009, Ivantis was told that it infringed Glaukos patents.
- In 2013, Ivantis hired “patent litigation counsel” to conduct diligence
related to Glaukos’s patents. Shortly thereafter, Ivantis instituted its email-deletion policy that resulted in deleting all the emails relating to the patents at issue here. The same attorneys represent Ivantis in this litigation.
- In 2017, Ivantis CEO distributed a report from an industry analyst wo indicated Glaukos would sue Ivantis for infringement in 2018.
- In 2018 (about a month before the lawsuit), Ivantis began preparing a petition for IPR.
In its decision, the appellate panel found these events sufficient to sustain the lower court’s determination that Ivantis “acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use in the litigation.”* Ivantis uses the politically correct ‘retention policy’ rather than ‘destruction policy.’FRCP R. 37(e) Failure to Preserve Electronically Stored Information. If electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, and it cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery, the court:(1) upon finding prejudice to another party from loss of the information, may order measures no greater than necessary to cure the prejudice; or(2) only upon finding that the party acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use in the litigation may:(A) presume that the lost information was unfavorable to the party;(B) instruct the jury that it may or must presume the information was unfavorable to the party; or(C) dismiss the action or enter a default judgment.
