Friday, April 16, 2021
inter partes review ("IPR") proceeding do not provide for the same methods of discovery available in a patent infringement lawsuit.
As such, when opportunities for discovery present themselves in an IPR proceeding, it is important to capitalize on them. Attorneys need to understand the differences between the discovery allowed in a federal lawsuit and the discovery allowed in an IPR proceeding. A key difference between these two proceedings is the role of a deposition.
All trial lawyers know the mechanics of a routine deposition: A long day in a conference room (or, these days, on a zoom call) where fact gathering is broken up by increments of "let's take fifteen" for coffee, strategy discussions, and the like. Although depositions in an IPR proceeding have this same feel, IPR depositions can be very different from federal lawsuit depositions in terms of both scope and strategy.