The Eastern District of Texas Issues Its Own Model Order for e-Discovery in Patent Cases

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has incorporated a Model Order Regarding E-Discovery In Patent Cases into its Local Rules as Appendix P. A working group of the Local Rules Advisory Committee reviewed the Model Order Regarding E-Discovery in Patent Cases that was presented by Federal Circuit Chief Judge Randall Rader to the Texas Eastern Bench Bar Conference in September 2011 and used this Model Order as a baseline in developing such an order for the Eastern District. The working group has provided a redline/strikeout version of Appendix P, which reflects changes from Chief Judge Radar’s Model Order and provides detailed commentary behind the changes. While the working group decided that a variation of the Model Order was helpful, the comments note that the changes have been incorporated as a Model Order in the Appendix rather than an actual local rule to allow “maximum flexibility for both litigants and the court as attempts are made to tailor e-discovery planning to different facts, case to case.”  As noted in Law Technology News, the proposed order “makes some useful modifications to the Federal Circuit’s model e-discovery order, particularly with respect to the local Patent Rules mandatory disclosure requirements.”  The Model Order provides clear and practical e-discovery rules for practitioners in patent cases in the Eastern District, including the extent of metadata disclosure, limitations on email production requests, and parameters for ESI production.