The case of Gabriel Technological Corporation v. Qualcomm Incorporated, 2013 WL 410103,(S.D.Cal.) was an exceptional case where the court determined that plaintiffs’ “frivolous claims” in a patent lawsuit (where among others, plaintiff failed to provide sufficient evidence to establish the rightful inventors of the patents at issue) warranted sanctions and cost shifting. Having prevailed in the lawsuit, Qualcomm sought attorney fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285. A partial amount of the fees sought was for the predictive coding used to search, cull and review prior to the defense production.
The predictive coding amount came to $2,829,349.10, which is a significant amount of money. However, this amount was greatly reduced from what it might have been if the data has been manually searched and culled. The computer-assisted eDiscovery software searched and reviewed over 92 relevant patents for the litigation, which came to over 12,000,000 electronic documents.
Court Praises Use of Predictive Coding to Reduce Costs of Document Review
The court praised the use of computer-assisted, algorithmic driven document review and noted the “decision to undertake a more efficient and less time-consuming method of document review to be reasonable under the circumstances…[the party] reduced the overall fees and attorney hours required by performing electronic document review at the outset. Thus, the Court finds the requested amount of $2,829,349.10 to be reasonable.” Id., slip op. at 9.