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The Threat of Evidence Destruction

By James W. Soong and Y.T. Chen
November 25, 2008

In high-technology disputes, a patentee must secure a thorough understanding of often complex and subtle technologies in accused devices to prove patent infringement. Despite a patentee's best efforts to obtain proof of infringement, very often the most convincing evidence of patent infringement ' for example, proprietary design documents of the accused device ' lies within the possession of the alleged infringer itself. The survivability of that core evidence, however, can be under constant threat due to, for example, periodic purging of information pursuant to routine business practice or even bad-faith spoliation efforts by the alleged infringer. The risk to electronic evidence is especially grave because of its susceptibility to rapid erasure. Clearly, the threat of evidence destruction may seriously jeopardize the ability of a patentee to prove its case.

In this article, we examine judicial and other mechanisms in the United States and China that a patentee can utilize to safeguard evidence under the alleged infringer's control. In the United States, patentees need not wait the protracted time required for commencement of formal discovery to seek evidence under immediate threat of destruction. In China, which lacks a judicial construct precisely analogous to American discovery, patentees can employ special judicial and administrative measures even prior to commencement of suit to secure evidence in the hands of the alleged infringer.

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