{"id":2189,"date":"2018-08-15T21:58:36","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T01:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=2189"},"modified":"2018-09-03T21:59:19","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T01:59:19","slug":"there-must-be-at-least-some-causal-connection-between-the-misconduct-and-the-fee-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/?p=2189","title":{"rendered":"There Must be at least Some \u201cCausal\u00a0Connection\u201d Between the Misconduct and the Fee Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

In In re Rembrandt Technologies LP Patent Litigation<\/a>, [2017-1784] (August 15, 2018), the Federal Circuit held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in\u00a0deeming this case exceptional, but that the court erred by\u00a0failing to analyze fully the connection between the fees\u00a0awarded and Rembrandt\u2019s misconduct, and vacated\u00a0the district court\u2019s fee award, and remanded for further\u00a0proceedings.<\/p>\n

Rembrandt asserted two patents\u00a0that were revived improperly; allowed spoliation of\u00a0evidence; improperly gave consultants\u00a0an interest contingent on the litigation outcome;\u00a0and threatened AOPs with a baseless injunction\u00a0demand.\u00a0 The district court\u00a0determined that the case was \u201cindeed exceptional\u201d\u00a0for three reasons. First, the court\u00a0found that \u201cthe evidence shows that Rembrandt improperly\u00a0compensated its fact witnesses, in violation of ethical\u00a0rules of conduct.\u201d Second,\u00a0the court was \u201cconvinced that Rembrandt engaged in (or\u00a0failed to prevent) widespread document spoliation over a\u00a0number of years.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Finally, the court found that \u201cRembrandt\u00a0should have known that the \u2018revived patents\u2019 were\u00a0unenforceable.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The district court ultimately ordered Rembrandt to\u00a0pay more than $51 million in fees to all Appellees.<\/p>\n

On the exceptionality finding, The Federal Circuit said that Rembrandt raised strong arguments with respect to\u00a0the district court\u2019s factual findings. The Federal Circuit said that the district\u00a0 court\u2019s\u00a0remarkably terse orders (four pages) shed little light on its justifications\u00a0for its decisions on these fact-intensive issues. But\u00a0abuse of discretion is a deferential standard. On the\u00a0record before it, the Federal Circuit could not say that any of the district\u00a0court\u2019s findings was based \u201con an erroneous view of the\u00a0law or on a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the issue of the amount of the award,\u00a0Rembrandt raised\u00a0no specific objections to Appellees\u2019 tabulations of the\u00a0hours they expended; nor did Rembrandt contend that
\nAppellees should have calculated fees using a lower\u00a0hourly rate. Rembrandt instead argued that the fee\u00a0award is excessive and unreasonable because the district
\ncourt failed to establish a causal connection between the\u00a0claimed misconduct and the fees awarded, and the Federal Circuit agreed.\u00a0 The district court did not explain why
\nan award of almost all fees was warranted or whether it\u00a0had accepted appellee’s argument that the pervasive misconduct justified an award of all fees.\u00a0\u00a0The district court, by and large, did not even attempt\u00a0to assess which issues the claimed misconduct affected.<\/p>\n

Even if Rembrandt\u2019s misconduct, taken\u00a0as a whole, rendered the case exceptional, the district\u00a0court was required to establish at least some \u201ccausal\u00a0connection\u201d between the misconduct and the fee award.\u00a0\u00a0What the district court did \u2014award all fees with
\nno explanation whatsoever of such a causal connection\u2014was not enough.\u00a0 The Federal Circuit thus\u00a0vacated the district court\u2019s fee award and\u00a0remanded for the district court to conduct the appropriate\u00a0analysis in the first instance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In In re Rembrandt Technologies LP Patent Litigation, [2017-1784] (August 15, 2018), the Federal Circuit held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in\u00a0deeming this case exceptional, but that the court erred by\u00a0failing to analyze fully the connection … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-attorneys-fees","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2192,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2189\/revisions\/2192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patents.harnessip.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}