Tag:Taxable Costs

Key Insight: Court denied Defendant?s request for e-discovery costs. Defendant?s vendor provided services to create optical character recognition (?OCR?) image and text files for Defendant?s productions. The Court concluded that the costs of creating electronic copies of documents are recoverable but the costs of creating a dynamic, indexed and searchable database that allows counsel to search for and within the documents are not recoverable. The Court denied Defendant?s recovery of costs for the technical services provided by their e-discovery vendor.

Nature of Case: Taxable costs

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Key Insight: Court sustained objection to award of taxable costs related to vendor?s work to provide Plaintiff with an image of Plaintiff?s work computer

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs

Key Insight: Defendants sought to recover costs incurred to scan and convert paper documents into electronic format, Bates stamp and print the documents they produced; as well as costs for taking corporate representative depositions. Plaintiffs objected ?on the basis that more than two-thirds of the production costs?are the costs of making electronic copies and extra paper copies of documents for [Defendants?] own use.? The court found Defendants costs were incurred in order to comply with the production of ESI, and that costs for Bates stamping was ?reasonable and necessary? – as Defendants pointed out ?producing 125,517 pages?without a single identifying number would render such production entirely useless.? Also, Defendants provided sufficient supporting evidence for the costs incurred in making copies of the produced documents. The court granted Defendants? request for costs. Plaintiffs argued the Clerk of Court?s finding that Defendants failed to meet the requirements of Local Rule 54.1(b)(3) regarding deposition costs was correct. This court indicated 28 U.S.C. ? 1920 provides the ?outer bounds? of a courts? discretion in awarding costs, citing the Third Circuit ?deposition expenses, including the costs of deposition transcripts, may be awarded as costs to the prevailing party if the court determines, at the end of the litigation, that the copies were of papers necessary for use in the case.? Finding Defendants? deposition and transcripts were ?at least ?reasonably necessary? as part of their efforts to effectively litigate this patent case,? the court granted Defendant?s request.

Nature of Case: Taxable costs

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Key Insight: Court held that ?costs of creating and maintaining an electronic platform for e-Discovery are not recoverable under ? 1920(4).?

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs

Key Insight: Addressing taxable costs for electronic discovery, the court acknowledged the lack of any ?on-point Eleventh Circuit law? and deemed CBT Flint Partners, LLC v. Return Path, Inc., 737 F.3d 1320, 1325 (Fed. Cir. 2013) ?to be the most persuasive circuit court opinion on the issue?; where even CBT Flint Partners LLC did not address costs related to OCR, however, the court indicated it would ?follow the fundamental principle that the costs statute is ?modest? and ?narrow? and ?limited to minor, incidental expenses? and excluded OCR costs from Defendant?s costs request

Nature of Case: Antitrust

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs for electronic discovery

Key Insight: Noting that ?this court has held previously, ?the costs associated with the formatting and preparing of the administrative record are proper and necessarily incurred to produce electronic copies? for use in the case? the court allowed costs for ?converting TIFF images into searchable PDF format, electronically Bates-stamping the PDF images, hyperlinking the PDF images to the index, editing the index, and burning the images to DVDs.?

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs

Key Insight: Court declined to allow costs for OCR, ?concordance hosting,? ??volume mastering,? ?unitization,? ?document imaging,? ?CD duplication,? and ?media formatting,?? but did allow costs associated with TIFF and PDF conversion

Nature of Case: Patent

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable Costs related to e-Discovery

Key Insight: Where Plaintiffs objected to Defendants? recovery of ESI-related costs because the parties agreed that the costs of producing ESI from reasonably accessible sources would be borne by the producing party, the court reasoned that ?it did not follow that the scope of the agreement [could] be expanded to also address the costs recoverable to the prevailing party upon completion of the case,? that ?the parties agreed to require the production of metadata, in addition to simply reformatting the information into a non-editable format,? and that ?[t]he costs for such production are recoverable? and found that the copying costs incurred for the production of ESI were required for use in the case, limited to allowable costs, and reasonable and thus Plaintiff?s motion for a review of the clerk?s order taxing costs was denied

Nature of Case: Taxable costs where parties had agreed that producing parties would bear cost of production from reasonably accessible sources