In re Seagate questions the scope of privilege and work-product waiver associated with an opinion-of-counsel defense to willfulness. In a new article, Joseph Casino and Michael Kasdan attempt to re-focus the debate by arguing for a "temporal limitation on the scope of waiver which is not hinged on retaining separate [opinion and litigation] counsel." In addition, the article delves further into the CAFC’s Quantum dicta, which encourages bifurcation of trials for liability and willfulness issues.
In In re Seagate Technology, L.L.C., the en banc Federal Circuit has the opportunity (and, it seems, the desire) to squarely address the troubling issues that have arisen in connection with the doctrine of willfulness. The manner in which the Court resolves these issues could have far-reaching impact on accused infringers’ practice of obtaining opinions of counsel and on their practical ability to rely on these opinions to defend against a charge of willful infringement without exposing their ongoing communications with and the work-product of their trial counsel.
The Federal Circuit should adopt a waiver doctrine that encourages the procurement and reliance upon opinions of counsel when one becomes aware of a pre-suit infringement assertion. In such cases, the solution of adopting a temporal cut-off to the waiver of attorney work-product and communications that occur after the litigation has been initiated strikes the proper balance for both patentees and accused infringers. However, it would be a mistake to seek a similar result by creating a bright-line rule that depends on the use of separate trial and opinion counsel to insulate post-litigation communications with counsel from discovery. Further, mandating bifurcation of willfulness issues until after a determination of liability would ease waiver concerns no matter what waiver framework is adopted by the Federal Circuit.
Read the article: [HTML] [PDF]. Preferred Citation: Joseph Casino and Michael Kasdan, In re Seagate Technology: Willfulness and Waiver, a Summary and a Proposal, 2007 Patently-O Patent L.J. 1, https://patentlyo.com/lawjournal/2007/05/in_re_seagate_t.html.