On September 13, 2017, Judge Kinkeade granted, in part, a motion to compel filed in Securus v. Global Tel*Link (order available here). Plaintiff asserted, in its motion to compel, that defendant failed to comply with certain requests for production (e.g., requests seeking documents relating to how the defendant detects three-way calls, and relating to revenue earned by the defendant in connection with its accused products).
Per the Court,
Regarding GTL’s effort to locate and produce responsive documents, the Court agrees with Securus that GTL’s failure to produce a substantial number of documents responsive to these requests until after Securus filed a motion to compel is indicative that GTL did not put substantial effort into locating and producing responsive documents. But, it may be the case that GTL did put reasonable effort into responding to these discovery requests but was unable to determine exactly what types of documents Securus was seeking until it alerted GTL of these issues in its motion to compel production. . . .
The Court is not persuaded by GTL’s argument regarding its lack of documents because it purchased the invention from another company. As Securus points out, GTL actually acquired that entire company, which would likely include possession, custody, and control of these records.
So, the Court specifically ORDERS GTL to conduct a diligent search for and to produce the following types of documents that are responsive to Requests for Productions Nos. 22-24, 32-34, 40, 49: engineering design documents, release notes, network diagrams for facilities served by GTL and GTL’s data centers, database schema, and source code showing how each of the accused features and functionality are implemented in GTL’s accused systems. Such search and production shall include all documents obtained by GTL through its purchase of the company that GTL purchased in order to acquire the invention.
Similarly,
[T]he Court ORDERS GTL to conduct a diligent search for and to produce the following types of documents that are responsive to Requests for Productions Nos. 36-39: engineering design documents, release notes, network diagrams for facilities served by GTL and GTL’s data centers, database schema, and source code. . . .
[T]he Court ORDERS GTL to conduct a diligent search for and to produce documents that are responsive to Requests for Productions Nos. 57, 59, and 60 including any responsive documents that indicate revenue received on a per facility basis.
If GTL, after diligently searching for any the above specific responsive document types, GTL is unable to locate any responsive documents that have not already been produced, GTL shall certify that it has conducted a diligent search and has not located any documents that are not previously produced.