On 15 March 2023 a case management hearing was held in the Federal Court, Sydney before Justice Burley, J..
Christian Dimitriadis SC appeared for CPC and Angus Lang SC appeared for Apple.
The hearing was scheduled to deal with Apple not filing its evidence in chief on invalidity of CPC’s Australian patents into court by 2 March 2023 as ordered by the court on 14 December 2022.
The Court has now given Apple’s lawyers, DLA Piper, hard deadlines to follow, firstly to identify the prior art it relies on by 10am on 16 March 2023 (which has been done), secondly to serve its evidence on the background and common general knowledge (CGK) by 20 March 2023 and thirdly, to complete the balance of its evidence and file into court by 24 March 2023.
Justice Burley J. also awarded CPC its costs of and related to this case management hearing. This is the first costs order made in the case and reflects his dissatisfaction at Apple’s conduct in this matter.
In particular, Burley J. made the following comments to Apple’s barrister (Lang) which we have extracted from the transcript: “there are two points that concern me about this. One is that you let the deadline pass before raising it and before raising it with the court. Having regard to the nature of this particular case, you will have to do some work to explain why that was justified. And second, the skim I’ve done of Ms Sanders’ affidavit really doesn’t supply much of an explanation.”
“I mean, if you’ve been going since August, what have you been doing?…When did the preparation actually start in earnest?”
“Now, I’m still not particularly satisfied – or maybe I should just say that I’m little bit disgruntled about the slowness with which you’ve taken to bring the matter to the court’s attention”
“I don’t find particularly helpful kicking sand in my face, metaphorically, the second half of Ms Sanders’ affidavit which appears to be directed at prior misdeeds. They’re very much adjectival points that parties make.”
We will provide further updates as they occur.
