Tag:Taxable Costs

Key Insight: Court addressed recovery of costs related to electronic discovery pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1920(4) ?applying the law of the regional circuit (in this case, the Eleventh Circuit)”

Nature of Case: Patent Infringement

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs related to electronic discovery

Key Insight: Addressing taxable costs related to electronic discovery, the court agreed with the reasoning in prior case law that ?costs for electronic .TIFF and .PFD conversion and OCR of documents produced in discovery were permissible exemplification costs, but pre-production document collection and processing costs were not? and concluded that ?database hosting costs separate from .TIFF and OCR conversion, Bates stamping, load file and other physical media generation are non-compensable ??

Nature of Case: Patent litigation

Electronic Data Involved: taxable costs

Key Insight: Noting that it was undisputed that e-discovery costs were available as taxable costs under Section 1920(4), but that there was scant legal authority in the circuit and district giving litigants guidance in seeking those costs, court deducted one-half of defendants’ request for costs related to electronically processing, hosting, and producing documents in discovery as well as electronically processing both sides’ trial exhibits, and awarded defendants $3,454 in e-discovery costs

Nature of Case: Commercial litigation

Electronic Data Involved: ESI and trial exhibits

Key Insight: Court declined to allow recovery of costs related to the copying and maintenance of emails within an electronic database where the party seeking recovery voluntarily assumed the costs to avoid the need to review voluminous hard copy and where the copies were not obtained ?for use in the case? as evidenced by the petitioner?s reliance on only a very small portion of ESI as exhibits in this case

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs related to storage of emails, ESI

Key Insight: Court found costs associated with converting information into the agreed-upon format and electronically Bates stamping were analogous to copying costs and therefore taxable and thus allowed recovery of such costs over Defendant?s objection

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs

Key Insight: Court declined to allow recovery of costs related to maintenance of an electronic discovery database but allowed recovery of costs related to ?processing of electronic documents, including conversion of native files to ?TIFF? format for production to Abbott; conversion of document[s] from ?TIFF? format to a searchable format; importing and loading of documents to an electronic database; production of electronic documents; and the associated project and technical support?

Electronic Data Involved: ESI taxable costs

Key Insight: Addressing issue of taxable costs related to electronic discovery, court allowed recovery of costs related to ?converting already selected files into a database,? bates stamping, conversion to searchable PDF, and storage of electronic data but denied recovery as to collecting documents and culling them for responsiveness

Electronic Data Involved: Taxable costs related to ESI

Key Insight: Addressing Defendant?s efforts to recover costs related to ?technical, specialized services that were needed in order to ?collect, process, preserve, track, copy to digital format, and ultimately produce? the large amount of electronically stored information (?ESI?) that was utilized in the discovery process in this case,? the court adopted the Third Circuit?s reasoning in Race Tires America, Inc. v. Hoosier Racing Tire Corp and thus determined that ?a prevailing party may recover costs associated with copying or duplicating its files, but it may not receive reimbursement for any other ESI-related expenses?; in the present case the court found that ?the only tasks that involve copying are the conversion of native files to TIFF and PDF formats and the transfer of files onto CDs?

Nature of Case: Unfair and deceptive trade practices

Electronic Data Involved: ESI taxable costs

Key Insight: Defendant moved to re-tax $202K of costs for exemplification and reproduction that were denied by the clerk. The court found that costs of copies provided to Defendant?s witnesses were not necessary or taxable because they were not requested by or tendered to the opposing party, as discussed in In re Ricoh Co., Ltd. Patent Litig., 661 F.3d 1361, 1368 (Fed. Cir. 2011). The court allowed $12.013.68 in XDD?s costs for converting documents to TIFF, performing OCR (required by court order) and producing the documents to Plaintiff. Defendant argued costs from third-party vendor IAV for storage of responsive documents and processes to allow digital searching of Defendant?s databases should have been allowed by the clerk. Plaintiff argued these were costs for collection and review of documents, rather than for copying. Plaintiff also argued the OCR fees were duplicative and that Defendant?s invoices did not provide sufficient detail to support taxation. The court found these costs were not taxable (searching and organizing rather than copying, as well as duplicative) and properly denied by the clerk.

Nature of Case: Taxable Costs

Electronic Data Involved: ESI

Key Insight: Court noted that the Third Circuit has ?persuasively reasoned that ?only the conversion of native files to TIFF (the agreed-upon default format for production of ESI), and the scanning of documents to create digital duplicates are generally recognized as the taxable ?making copies of material,?? (Race Tires Am., Inc. v. Hoosier Racing Tire Corp, 674 F.3d 158 (3d Cir. 2012)) but held that in the present case, the ?precise scope of ? 1920(4) [was] immaterial? because of the parties? contract regarding costs and expenses and declined to deny recovery or reduce the amount sought

Nature of Case: Engineering malpractice

Electronic Data Involved: taxable costs