The amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) become effective on December 1. The amendments will impact non-practicing patent owners who are used to filing form patent infringement complaints with little pre-filing research and leveraging the fact they have little to produce in discovery compared to the defendants.
The amendments eliminate the patent infringement form, and require patent owners state additional facts in support of infringement, and in some cases file claim charts.
The amendments will also reduce the scope of discovery to "any non-privileged matter that is relevant to any party’s claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case, considering the importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit."
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