Avaya Inc. v. Pearce

Background

Avaya Inc. and defendant Atlas Systems, Inc. submitted a discovery dispute concerning Atlas’s responses to Avaya’s First Set of Requests for Production of Documents. The dispute concerned two issues: whether Atlas had to provide customer information related to sales of Avaya licenses, and the time period covered by the requested sales information.

Rulings on customer information

The court ordered Atlas to provide all requested customer information, including information concerning sales of Avaya licenses. The court agreed with Avaya that the information was relevant to Avaya’s claims.

Addressing Atlas’s customer-privacy concerns, the court stated that Atlas could designate appropriate information as confidential under the protective order. The court also instructed Avaya that it could contact Atlas’s customers only after giving Atlas five days’ advance notice. Avaya could subpoena an Atlas customer only by stipulation or after showing good cause to the court.

Ruling on the time period

The court held that Avaya could seek information beginning in 2009. It relied on Polar Bear Products v. Timex Corp., which the opinion described as holding that the statute of limitations does not prevent recovery of damages incurred more than three years before filing when the copyright plaintiff reasonably lacked knowledge of the infringement.

The opinion states that Avaya alleged it had only recently discovered the alleged infringement and that, under Polar Bear, the information was discoverable. The court acknowledged arguments that the discovery rule recognized in Polar Bear was no longer valid after Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc. and Sohm v. Scholastic Inc. But it concluded that, absent a clear overruling by the Supreme Court, it remained bound by the Ninth Circuit precedent described in Polar Bear.

The court expressly made no finding about whether Avaya was actually entitled to recover damages dating back to 2009.

Disposition

The court ordered Atlas to produce the discovery at issue within two weeks of the order’s filing date. This was a discovery ruling, not a final decision on Avaya’s entitlement to damages.