MyChoice, LLC and Barboards, LLC v. Taiv, Inc.

Summary

The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas considers Taiv, Inc.’s motion to strike portions of plaintiffs’ technical expert Joseph C. McAlexander III’s reports. The court denies most of the motion, concluding that the challenged opinions concerning claim construction and infringement theories were sufficiently consistent with the court’s construction and plaintiffs’ infringement contentions. The court grants the motion only as to opinions identifying Taiv employees and advertisers as users and strikes the specified report paragraphs.

Holdings

1. Opinions that the prior-art system did not perform real-time detection because it intentionally delayed or time-shifted content were consistent with the court’s construction of “real-time” detection as detection without the content being time-shifted and were not subject to exclusion.
2. Opinions that Candelore and Durden did not disclose real-time detection because they analyzed content before it was streamed were consistent with the court’s construction and were not subject to exclusion.
3. The challenged opinions identifying Taiv employees and advertisers as the claimed users were subject to exclusion because they exceeded the scope of Plaintiffs’ infringement contentions, and Plaintiffs did not oppose this portion of the motion.
4. Opinions that Taiv system modes and an advertising blacklist constituted user preferences indicating undesirability were not shown to introduce new infringement theories and were not subject to exclusion.
5. The expert’s opinions that the Taiv box was both the claimed output device and monitoring station were not subject to exclusion because Plaintiffs’ infringement contentions provided fair notice of that theory.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the expert’s opinions concerning real-time detection and analysis of prior-art systems were inconsistent with the court’s construction of “real-time” detection.
2. Whether opinions concerning Taiv employees and advertisers as users, modes and advertising blacklists as user preferences, and the Taiv box as the output device and monitoring station exceeded Plaintiffs’ infringement contentions.
3. Whether the challenged expert opinions were sufficiently reliable, relevant, and properly disclosed to remain admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and applicable procedural disclosure requirements.

Disposition

other