Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation v. Adobe Inc.

- Motion 1—Adobe’s Form 10-K filings: Granted in part and denied in part. The filings could be admitted without an authenticating witness, but their admission at trial would depend on relevance. Potentially relevant portions could concern a defense that the alleged damages were unreasonable and the meanings of “consumer” and “professional.” The court stated that the filings would not ordinarily be admitted in their entirety, and Dolby had to identify only the portions it intended to use. The ruling was otherwise denied without prejudice to Adobe renewing its relevance objection at trial. - Motion 2—Extrinsic evidence about the Creative Cloud Letter: Denied. The court had previously found the letter ambiguous, so under California law evidence outside the letter could be admitted to support either reasonable interpretation. - Motion 3—Evidence about Adobe’s intellectual-property licenses and audits of its licensees: Denied without prejudice to Adobe renewing the objection at trial under relevance or Rule

1. Although details of third-party licenses and audits appeared potentially irrelevant, some evidence could bear on Adobe’s credibility and consistency concerning its 2015 audit by Dolby. The court did not find that the evidence, including testimony from Mr. Shum or Mr. Perry, would be so confusing that it should be excluded. - Motion 4—Extrinsic evidence about “professional” and “consumer”: Granted in part and denied in part for substantially the same reasons as Adobe’s Motion
2. Adobe’s Form 10-K filings could not be admitted in their entirety, but relevant portions could be admitted without an authenticating witness as evidence about the meaning of ambiguous contract terms. The denial was without prejudice to Adobe renewing its relevance objection at trial, and Dolby had to identify the portions of the filings it intended to use. - Motion 6—Undisclosed witnesses and documents: Granted in part and denied in part. The request to exclude witnesses because of alleged delay in disclosure was denied because the court found Adobe’s litigation strategy contributed to the delay. The request concerning allegedly undisclosed MainConcept documents was also denied. But the court warned that anticipated witnesses had to be identified under the schedule in Pretrial Order No. 3, and failure to identify a witness could lead to exclusion. - Motion 7—Rebuttal experts John M. Strawn and Lorin M. Hitt: Denied as to Dr. Strawn. The court found that Adobe’s litigation strategy contributed substantially to any delay in identifying him and that Adobe had a fair opportunity to respond to his opinions. The portion concerning Dr. Hitt was deemed withdrawn because the parties had stipulated to withdraw their respective industry experts, Dr. Kursh for Adobe and Dr. Hitt for Dolby. - Motion 8—Metrics relating to Dolby Digital Plus technology: Denied as untimely. The court said Adobe should have raised its challenge to the basis of Mr. Meyer’s damages calculations in the earlier expert-testimony proceedings. The court also found that the arguments concerned the weight the jury might give the evidence rather than grounds for excluding it. - Motion 9—Dolby patents not disclosed during discovery: Denied without prejudice to Adobe renewing the objection at trial based on relevance or Rule
3. Adobe had not supported its exclusion argument, and the evidence might be relevant depending on the parties’ trial positions, including to rebut an argument about the expiration of certain Dolby patents. - Motion 10—Chris Choi’s testimony about auditing: Granted in part and denied in part. The motion was granted as to testimony about the parties’ state of mind, which the court said generally was not an appropriate subject for expert testimony. It was denied as to testimony about AICPA standards and Adobe’s alleged failure to cooperate during the audit because those subjects concerned the weight of the evidence. - Motion 11—Extraterritorial copyright damages: Denied. The court found the motion untimely because Adobe should have raised the arguments in its earlier challenge to Mr. Meyer’s expert testimony. The court also noted that Adobe had not rebutted Dolby’s argument that Adobe alone had the information needed to allocate damages for enterprise term licenses containing non-U.S. licenses. - Motion 12—Attachments to Dr. Strawn’s rebuttal report: Granted in part and denied in part. Dolby1765 and Dolby1766 could be admitted to the extent they listed Dr. Strawn’s technical findings about Adobe’s products and whether Dolby’s copyrighted source code was contained in them, but other portions were inadmissible. Dolby could submit replacement or newly identified versions. Dolby1767 through Dolby1773, which contained publicly available third-party source code, could be admitted if Dr. Strawn authenticated them and provided a foundation. Dolby1764 and Dolby1774, which contained publicly available research materials, did not appear admissible as exhibits themselves, although Dr. Strawn might have relied on them in his analysis. - Motion 13—“May-call” witnesses in Dolby’s case-in-chief: Granted in part and denied in part. The court found that Dolby appeared to have complied with the deadline for identifying likely witnesses, but reiterated that any anticipated witness had to be identified under Pretrial Order No.
4. Failure to identify a witness on time risked exclusion. - Motion 14—Schedules attached to Dolby’s damages expert reports: Denied without prejudice to Adobe renewing its objection at trial for lack of foundation. The schedules summarized the data underlying Mr. Meyer’s opinions and could be admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 1006, which permits summaries of voluminous writings. The underlying data could also be admitted if necessary to authenticate the schedules, but Mr. Meyer had to provide a proper foundation.