Mere Existence of JDG Found to be Enough
It can be an uphill battle to secure additional discovery at the
Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) given the “interests
of justice” standard of IPR proceedings. For this reason,
Patent Owners seeking discovery on petitioner relationships —
to discover unnamed parties in RPI/privity disputes — are
frequently turned away absent “smoking gun” evidence of
such a relationship.
However, a recent decision of the Board appears to take a far
more liberal view of multi-defendant relationships where a Joint
Defense Group (JDG) is known to exist.
In Adobe Inc. v., RAH Color Technologies LLC (here), Patent Owner sought discovery of the
underlying agreement between members of a JDG, arguing that members
of the JDG may be coordinating invalidity strategy/defense with the
named petitioner. The Patent Owner pointed to privilege log entries
that indicated communication between the parties prior to filing
the IPRs, and that the petitioner
