Infringement Contention Identifying Products by “Standard” or “Series” is Insufficient

The court granted plaintiff's motion to strike the reports of defendant's infringement experts as to newly identified products. "[I]dentifying products 'that include DDR3 SDRAM memory' or otherwise practice the JEDEC standard is not sufficient to specifically identify products that may fall into those categories. Although identifying that a component practices a standard may be useful for proving an infringement theory across several products that contain that component, identifying a standard is not sufficient to specifically name an accused product. . . . Although [defendant] argues that identifying the standard was sufficient to put [plaintiff] on notice of the accused products practicing the standard, the Local Rules required [defendant] to do the work of identifying those products. . . . Similarly, the Court finds that identifying a product that has a different name, but which [defendant] claims is substantially similar to a named product, is not sufficient identification under the Local Rules. . . . [A]lthough somewhat more specific than identifying a product based on practicing a standard, [defendant's] identification of a 'series' of products was not sufficient under the Local Rules to identify the products within a series, as the infringement contentions did not identify each accused product as specifically as possible."

ASUS Computer International v. Round Rock Research, LLC, 3-12-cv-02099 (CAND April 11, 2014, Order) (Cousins, M.J.)