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Law360 (February 12, 2021, 10:42 PM EST ) A Pennsylvania federal judge has once again delayed trials in two separate patent cases because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this time pushing them into January and February of next year, according to a pair of orders filed Thursday.
In one of the cases, Cutsforth Inc. was set to duke it out with rival LEMM Liquidating Co. LLC over an electric generator brush holder patent in a May trial. In the other, Lambeth Magnetic Structures LLC and Seagate Technology Holdings Inc. were headed to a June trial over hard disk drives patents.
The trials have already been delayed several times in the midst of the pandemic, as has been the case in jurisdictions across the country. As many other judges continue to reschedule trials for a month or two down the road, U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon has abandoned the notion of holding the trials anytime this year.
In Thursday's orders, Judge Bissoon postponed the Cutsforth trial until Jan. 10, 2022, and Seagate's trial until Feb. 7, 2022. The cases will remain stayed in the meanwhile, according to the orders.
"Once the court resumes normal operations, and restrictions necessitated by the virus have lapsed," the cases will be reopened, the judge said in case docket entries.
The moves are consistent with an updated administrative order issued by Western District of Pennsylvania Chief Judge Mark R. Hornak earlier this month, Judge Bissoon noted.
In that order, Judge Hornak said that all civil and criminal jury selections and trials scheduled to begin before May would be continued. He added that "novel and apparently more virulent variants of the COVID-19 virus are now being encountered regionally and in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with a negative and increasingly uncertain impact on ... public health."
"COVID-19 vaccine availability is and remains very limited, highly episodic, and in large measure unscheduled as to the population from which jurors would be drawn and as to all other participants in judicial proceedings," Judge Hornak said. "And that as a result of the same, the public health situation in terms of community spread of the COVID-19 virus remains critical in ways that would negatively impact this court and its operations."
Cutsforth's dispute with LEMM goes back to 2012, when Cutsforth accused LEMM, MotivePower Inc. and Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies Corp. of infringing its patents relating to removable brush holders for power-generating equipment.
The suit was lodged in Minnesota, but a Minnesota federal judge shipped the case from Minnesota to Pennsylvania in 2017, finding that the U.S. Supreme Court's TC Heartland decision, which puts limits on where patent cases can be filed, was an intervening change of law such that LEMM's failure to make a venue objection earlier was not a waiver of the objection.
A Federal Circuit panel vacated the venue transfer that November, sending the case back to the lower court to consider other factors besides the TC Heartland ruling. LEMM then filed another motion to transfer the case from Minnesota to Pennsylvania, and the district judge granted its request to do so in February 2018.
A trial was set for April of last year, but got pushed to October when the pandemic hit. Last September, Judge Bissoon postponed the trial again, scheduling it for May 24, 2021.
Patent holder Lambeth sued data storage company Seagate in 2016, accusing it of infringing patented magnetic crystal structures technology. Lambeth has claimed that Seagate illegally used the technology in its hard disk drives.
That trial was scheduled for June 2020 before being pushed to November, and later, to June 2021, according to the case docket.
As of Friday, the U.S. had reported more than 27.2 million cases of COVID-19 in the last month, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 474,000 people have died in the U.S.
Counsel for the parties didn't immediately return requests for comment late Friday.
The patents-in-suit in the Cutsforth case are U.S. Patent Nos. 7,141,906 and 7,990,018. The patent-in-dispute in the Lambeth suit is U.S. No. 7,128,988.
Cutsforth is represented by Mathias W. Samuel and Conrad Gosen of Fish & Richardson PC.
LEMM Liquidating is represented by Kent E. Baldauf Jr. and Fred Colen of The Webb Law Firm.
Lambeth Magnetic Structures is represented by John W. McIlvaine III and Christian D. Ehret of The Webb Law Firm, and Henry C. Bunsow, Denise De Mory, Christina M. Finn and Corey Johanningmeier of Bunsow de Mory LLP.
Seagate Technology is represented by Eric G. Soller and John A. Schwab of Pietragallo Gordan Alfano Bosick & Raspanti LLP, and David J.F. Gross, Nicholas P. Chan, Helen E. Chacon, Annalisa Choy, Calvin L. Litsey, Chad Drown, Katherine S. Razavi and Kevin P. Wagner of Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP.
The cases are Cutsforth Inc. v. Lemm Liquidating Co. LLC et al., case number 2:17-cv-01025; and Lambeth Magnetic Structures LLC v. Seagate Technology Holdings Inc. et al., case number 2:16-cv-00538; both in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
--Additional reporting by Tiffany Hu and Bonnie Eslinger. Editing by Regan Estes.
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