A federal magistrate just hammered six Qualcomm lawyers for failing to properly handle and produce evidence in the long-running Qualcomm vs Broadcom patent dispute.
The judge concluded that their declarations and other evidence lead to “the inevitable conclusion that Qualcomm intentionally withheld tens of thousands of decisive documents from its opponent in an effort to win this case and gain a strategic business advantage over Broadcom,” according to 48-page order released late yesterday.
“Qualcomm could not have achieved this goal without some type of assistance or deliberate ignorance from its retained attorneys,” she added.
Ouch! I’ve written about this issue before, and it’s not going to go away! You’d better have an effective discovery strategy in place before your organization ever gets involved in litigation, and this strategy should probably extend to making sure your inside and outside counsel aren’t stupid enough to try to “lose” e-mail messages. That trick never works.
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