Production of Source Code Limited to Functionality Identified in Infringement Contentions

The court denied plaintiff's motion to compel thirty defendants to produce their entire source code trees for each accused instrumentality and rejected plaintiff's argument that defendants exaggerated the burden of producing the entire trees. "The e-commerce systems at issue here are complex and involve different types of source code, computer languages, hardware systems, operating systems, third party interfaces, applications and data under third parties’ control. . . . More efficient than producing an entire source code tree, Defendants’ expert advocates to have Defendants’ technical employees – who are intimately familiar with their own source code – 'identify and provide the portions of source code that specifically relate to the aspects or functionality identified by the plaintiff in its infringement contentions.'. . . To the extent that [plaintiff's] PLR 3.1(c) charts identify any particular aspects or elements of a Defendant’s system that relate to source code, the court orders that the Defendant is only required to produce the source code that is 'sufficient to show the operation of' those system aspects identified in [plaintiff's] PLR 3.1(c) charts."

Ameranth, Inc. v. Pizza Hut, Inc., et. al., 3-11-cv-01810 (CASD February 20, 2013, Order) (Stormes, M.J.).