Patent Law

Typo

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

In 1991, Peter Hochstein and Jeffrey Tenenbaum came up with the idea of playing networked video games and chatting simultaneously. 5,292,125 resulted. In 2002, Microsoft launched an online Xbox gaming service that did just that. Litigation ensued in 2004. Living down to its litigation reputation, Microsoft dumped 143,733 discovery document pages on the other side, five weeks late, with no index. The delay was prompted by Microsoft objecting to a discovery request because of a typo, when Microsoft knew all along what was being asked for.

The typo was in asking for the transcript of a 2008 deposition, when it was 2009.

East Michigan Judge Paul D. Borman was not amused. "There was only one deposition of Ms. Mason, a Microsoft employee, and that had just occurred the previous month -- February 2009. Microsoft knew that; everyone knew that! Yet Microsoft improperly used that typographical error to raise a frivolous objection on the ground of vagueness."

"Time is short; trial is near," noted the judge. Judge Borman said that Microsoft will have to explain why its counsel (Dykema Gossett) does not deserve sanctions for frittering the court's time with a "frivolous objection" to a discovery request.

Dykema Gossett's web site motto is "a law firm unlike any other." Unlikely. Microsoft has a bevy of law firms that will do its bidding in its brass knuckles way.

RE36,574 is also asserted.

Source: Law360.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on May 27, 2009 (boomark / email).