Inventor Leverages Litigation Funding to Beat Microsoft

A recent court opinion in a copyright infringement cases has once again demonstrated that judges are hesitant to force plaintiffs and their funders to hand over information that is not relevant to the claim at hand, as the judge denied the defendant’s discovery request for documents sent by the plaintiff to its litigation funder.

In an article on E-Discovery LLC, Michael Berman analyses a ruling handed down by Judge Stephanos Bibas in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, in the case of Design With Friends, Inc. v. Target Corporation. Design has brought a claim of copyright infringement and breach of contract, and received funding to pursue the case from Validity Finance. As part of its defense, Target had sought documents from the funder relating to its involvement in the case, but Judge Bibas ruled that Target’s request was both “too burdensome to disclose” and was seeking “information that is attorney work product”.

Target’s broad subpoena contained five requests for information including Validity’s valuations of the lawsuit, communications between the funder and plaintiff prior to the funding agreement being signed, and information about the relationship between the two parties.

With regards to the valuations, Judge Bibas wrote that “while those documents informed an investment decision, they did so by evaluating whether a lawsuit had merit and what damages it might recover,” which in the court’s opinion constitutes “legal analysis done for a legal purpose”. He went on to say that “if the work-product doctrine did not protect these records,” then the forced disclosure of these documents “would chill lawyers from discussing a pending case frankly.”

Regarding the requests for information about the relationship between Design and Validity, Judge Bibas was clear in his opinion that these requests were disproportionately burdensome. The opinion lays out clear the clear reasoning that “Target already knows that Validity is funding the suit and that it does not need to approve a settlement”, and with this information already available “Further minutiae about Validity are hardly relevant to whether Target infringed a copyright or breached a contract years before Validity entered the picture.”The full opinion from Judge Bibas can be read here.

The online gambling market has seen enormous growth over recent years. However, the dramatic rise of this sector has left vulnerable consumers open to abuse, with a new class action in the Netherlands seeking to address this.

An article in iGB covers a Dutch class action being brought against a group of licensed online gambling operators, who were active in the Netherlands prior to receiving their official licenses to operate. The class action is being brought by Dutch advocacy organisation, Gokverliesterug, on behalf of Dutch consumers for losses suffered with these operators prior to 1 October 2021, the date at which the Netherlands legalised its online gambling market. 

The core allegation of the class action is that these companies allowed Dutch citizens to gamble using their online platforms before the legalisation took place, meaning that these consumers were not protected by the proper oversight and regulation of problem gambling behaviours. The gambling operators named in the Gokverliesterug lawsuit include major global gaming brands such as Unibet, Bwin, PokerStars and Bet365; although iGB’s article includes a denial from Bet365 that it was active in the Netherlands prior to being licensed. 

The lawyer representing Gokverliesterug, Koen Rutten of law firm Finch, stated: “We hope for a quick settlement of the case, but thanks to a litigation funder, we have sufficient clout to conduct a lengthy procedure up to the European Court. In doing so, we have paid extra attention for the role of parties that have facilitated illegal casinos for years, such as banks and payment processors.”

The litigation funder backing the case has not been identified.