Concurrent Ventures, LLC, et al. v. Advanced Micro Devices Inc., et al.

Background

This patent case concerns plaintiffs’ allegations that defendants’ data-processing unit products infringe five patents. The plaintiffs are Concurrent Ventures and XtreamEdge. The defendants are Advanced Micro Devices and Pensando Systems. The plaintiffs say the patents improve communications between central processing units and other network components by shifting data-heavy computations to specialized hardware.

The parties’ February 5, 2026 electronic-discovery order limited email requests to five custodians per producing side and five search terms per custodian. It stated that multiple words or phrases generally count as separate search terms unless they are variants of the same word. The parties disputed how that limit applied to their proposed searches and asked the court to resolve three issues.

The Motion to Compel

The plaintiffs moved to compel defendants to treat “DSC,” “DPU,” and “SmartNIC” as one search term; provide hit counts for those terms and for “AOP OR ‘Operating Plan*’”; and produce all non-privileged emails matching their selected terms. Defendants opposed the motion and asked the court to treat the three product terms separately, deny requests for new search terms, and limit their document review to 25,000 documents.

The court stated that the plaintiffs’ motion to compel was granted in part and denied in part.

Search-Term Dispute

The court denied the plaintiffs’ request to treat “DSC,” “DPU,” and “SmartNIC” as variants of the same word. The court acknowledged that defendants’ documents sometimes used the terms interchangeably, but also cited defendants’ explanation that the terms refer to different products or types of hardware: a DPU is a processor, a DSC is a card that may be inserted into a computer, and a SmartNIC or AINIC is a network interface card.

The court concluded that products can be related or used together without their names being variants of the same word. It therefore ruled that “DSC,” “DPU,” and “SmartNIC” are separate search terms, each counting toward the five-search-terms-per-custodian limit. The court also found that plaintiffs had not shown good cause to exceed that limit.

Hit Counts for the AOP Search

The court granted the plaintiffs’ request for hit counts for “AOP OR ‘Operating Plan*’” and ordered defendants to provide those counts within five days. The court reasoned that the electronic-discovery order contemplated testing search terms during negotiations and that plaintiffs represented they learned of the term’s relevance through later discovery.

The court denied requests for hit counts for any new terms beyond “AOP OR ‘Operating Plan*’.” It cited the approaching close of fact discovery, defendants’ prior searches of more than 100 terms, and the parties’ two-month delay in resolving the dispute.

Document-Review Limit

The court denied the plaintiffs’ request for production of all non-privileged emails matching their selected search terms and adopted defendants’ proposal to limit review to 25,000 documents. The court found that defendants had shown a substantial burden, estimating about 300 hours of review and costs above $100,000 for the broader requests.

The court recognized that the emails might be relevant to plaintiffs’ theories of induced infringement and willful infringement, but found that plaintiffs had not shown the emails had such high value that the burden was justified. Defendants must bear the cost of reviewing and producing up to 25,000 documents. Plaintiffs may agree to pay for additional email production.

Disposition

The discovery order resolved ECF No. 268. Judge Laurel Beeler granted in part and denied in part the plaintiffs’ motion to compel.