United States Federal Circuit

In a patent infringement suit, the district court's award of costs to defendants after prevailing on the merits, which the clerk taxed at $49,824.60 for defendant Return Path and $268,311.12 for defendant Cisco, is reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded, where: 1) the district court erred in its interpretation of the statutory provision governing the taxation of costs here, 28 U.S.C. section 1920(4); 2) the recoverable costs under section 1920(4) are those costs necessary to duplicate an electronic document in as faithful and complete a manner as required by rule, by court order, by agreement of the parties, or otherwise; 3) as to costs related to the formatting of the documents, the district court should determine, in the first instance, what requirements governing the format or other characteristics of the produced documents were imposed on the defendants; 4) as to costs associated with organization into a database and related project management costs, costs incurred in preparing to copy are not recoverable; and 5) the costs of copying responsive documents to production media are recoverable.

Appellate Information

• Decided 12/13/2013
• Published 12/13/2013

Judges

• TARANTO

Court

• United States Federal Circuit

Counsel