[00:00:00] Speaker 03: Our next case is Fire Block IP Holdings versus Hilti, Incorporated, and Lecture Seal, Incorporated, 2020-2095. [00:00:11] Speaker 03: Mr. Benchel. [00:00:15] Speaker 01: May it please the court. [00:00:17] Speaker 01: In deciding summary judgment, the lower court overlooked three areas that showed there's still genuine issues of material fact. [00:00:24] Speaker 01: Number one, there are no normal business records demonstrating that any [00:00:29] Speaker 01: actual sales of the accused products, let alone the products that were subject to the license were conducted. [00:00:36] Speaker 01: Number two, to the extent Rector Seals sells any products to Hilti, they are not covered by the license. [00:00:43] Speaker 01: And number three, the court overlooked the impact of Rector Seals failure to mark the licensed product with Fireblock's patent number. [00:00:53] Speaker 01: Now moving to the first issue of the normal business records, [00:00:57] Speaker 01: Simply put, there are no business records that demonstrate any sales. [00:01:02] Speaker 01: There's no contracts naming the products. [00:01:04] Speaker 01: There's no purchase orders. [00:01:06] Speaker 01: There are no shipping information. [00:01:07] Speaker 01: There's no evidence of payment. [00:01:10] Speaker 01: Think about that. [00:01:12] Speaker 01: These are two multinational corporations, and there are no documents whatsoever evidencing that there were any sales between these. [00:01:22] Speaker 01: Now, the lower court noted [00:01:24] Speaker 01: the absence of documents and said that that was unusual. [00:01:28] Speaker 01: So there are documents that have been provided, but what has been provided makes the matters worse. [00:01:34] Speaker 01: So first we have made up purchase orders and this is an appendix 700. [00:01:39] Speaker 01: These are purchase orders that were created strictly for the purpose of litigation to show what a purchase order would have looked like if it existed. [00:01:49] Speaker 01: And there are only two of them and they're only from 2017. [00:01:54] Speaker 01: There's also, at Appendix 704, Hilti's sales of the accused products. [00:02:01] Speaker 01: But this is annualized to 2017, meaning it's only for 2017. [00:02:06] Speaker 01: And it's been annualized, so we don't know the details of what those sales were. [00:02:12] Speaker 01: Moreover, we don't know where this data came from. [00:02:16] Speaker 01: Another made-up document comes from Hilti in the form of if purchases from Rector Seal. [00:02:24] Speaker 01: And that's at appendix 718. [00:02:26] Speaker 01: There, Hilti is listing all of their purchases for the accused product from Rector Seal. [00:02:36] Speaker 01: Rector Seal also provided the counterpart document, their sales of products of these products to Hilti. [00:02:45] Speaker 01: And that's at 786. [00:02:47] Speaker 01: The problem is these two documents are identical. [00:02:51] Speaker 01: The font is the same, the pagination is the same, which you would expect from different corporations. [00:02:57] Speaker 01: More importantly, the data enclosed in those documents are identical. [00:03:05] Speaker 01: For example, the vendor numbers are the same, meaning Hilti refers to Rector Seal by the same vendor number that Rector Seal refers to Hilti. [00:03:16] Speaker 01: In addition, in Hilti's report, [00:03:19] Speaker 01: the report that lists their purchases from RectorSeal, there's a column for inventory received. [00:03:25] Speaker 01: This is the inventory they received from RectorSeal. [00:03:30] Speaker 01: The RectorSeal document, the document of RectorSeal sales to Hilti, has the same inventory received column. [00:03:40] Speaker 01: You would expect, since RectorSeal is making the sale, that RectorSeal would have something like inventory sent or inventory shipped. [00:03:47] Speaker 01: But that's not the case. [00:03:48] Speaker 01: And we know what happened here. [00:03:50] Speaker 01: Hilti produced this document of its sales. [00:03:55] Speaker 01: Fireblock sought in a subpoena the same information. [00:03:59] Speaker 01: And RectorSeal simply took the same document and produced it as its own sales. [00:04:07] Speaker 01: Finally, RectorSeal produced the invoices. [00:04:11] Speaker 01: So two days before summary judgment briefing was to begin, Rector Seal produced about 220 documents that they say are invoices of the product. [00:04:20] Speaker 01: And to be clear, this is at appendix 1035. [00:04:24] Speaker 01: But these invoices do not mention the two products that Rector Seal was allowed to sell under the license. [00:04:33] Speaker 01: Under the license, and this is on page 103, 105 of the appendix, [00:04:40] Speaker 01: Under the license, Rector Seal was allowed to sell the Medi-Cock box guard and Medi-Cock cover guard products. [00:04:47] Speaker 01: The invoices that Rector Seal provided were for various different things, but seemed to all have a contraction for Firestop, which is the product that Hilti sells. [00:05:02] Speaker 01: So at best, this evidence, the invoices show that in fact, [00:05:07] Speaker 01: the products, that there were products that were purchased by Hilti, not necessarily those that they're allowed to be sold under license. [00:05:16] Speaker 01: And that's consistent with what Rector Shields' own attorney represented to the lower court. [00:05:24] Speaker 01: During the... Yes. [00:05:26] Speaker 03: Councilman Judge Laurie, I'm wondering if you lose either way because if you're right, [00:05:34] Speaker 03: that the evidence doesn't show the products all came from rectocele. [00:05:40] Speaker 03: That means there was no infringement. [00:05:43] Speaker 03: And if they did come from rectocele, then the license covered them. [00:05:50] Speaker 03: Don't you lose either way? [00:05:52] Speaker 01: Well, we respectfully disagree, and there's two reasons for that. [00:05:55] Speaker 01: First of all, if they didn't come from Rector Seal, the products did not come from Rector Seal, then these are products that are infringing FireBlox patents. [00:06:06] Speaker 01: And for all intents and purposes, Hilti has already acknowledged that they practice the 167 patents, FireBlox patents, for these products. [00:06:15] Speaker 01: If they came from Rector Seal, then you have to decide, then we have to determine, and it seems that this is the case, whether these products are the same. [00:06:27] Speaker 01: Under the agreement, under the settlement agreement, Rector Seal was allowed to sell two products. [00:06:35] Speaker 01: They were allowed to sell the box guard and cover guard products under [00:06:42] Speaker 01: either Rector Steel's name or another trade name. [00:06:46] Speaker 01: They weren't allowed to sell something that was similar to it, something that was chemically similar. [00:06:55] Speaker 01: They were supposed to be the same. [00:06:57] Speaker 01: The problem that Hilti has is that Rector Steel's attorney, and it's twofold. [00:07:03] Speaker 01: Rector Steel's attorney represented to the lower court that these products are not identical. [00:07:09] Speaker 01: During the discovery process, [00:07:11] Speaker 01: Fireblock issued a third party subpoena on Underwriter Labs, UL, and Rector Seale stopped to have that quash, that subpoena quash. [00:07:22] Speaker 01: During the August 2019 hearing, Rector Seale's attorney represented that Rector Seale was selling similar but not identical products, and that's at 359 of the appendix. [00:07:37] Speaker 01: In addition, at 345 of the appendix, [00:07:40] Speaker 01: Rector Steel's attorney said that Hilty's product might have slightly different chemical composition than the product that Rector Steel takes to market in its own name. [00:07:51] Speaker 01: Well, again, the license does not allow them to simply choose what they want to sell. [00:07:58] Speaker 01: There were specific requirements of what they were allowed to sell, what products would be subject to the license. [00:08:05] Speaker 01: In addition, [00:08:06] Speaker 01: RectorSeal had gone ahead and told UL it was no longer making the products for Hilti. [00:08:14] Speaker 01: So to give a little background, for Hilti to have the same UL certification as RectorSeal, because both RectorSeal and Hilti represented that these were the same products, the Hilti products had to be in UL's parlance multi-listed. [00:08:33] Speaker 01: meaning that RectorSeal went to UL and said, I'm making this product, it's the same product. [00:08:39] Speaker 01: And the multilisting began in 2006. [00:08:43] Speaker 01: But that ended in 2008 with an email that RectorSeal sent to UL. [00:08:48] Speaker 01: And in that email, RectorSeal, in the email, it's appendix 200, RectorSeal said that RectorSeal will no longer be manufacturing the firebox inserts for Hilti. [00:09:00] Speaker 01: As a result of that, [00:09:02] Speaker 01: UL terminated the multi-listing with the two products. [00:09:08] Speaker 01: Rector Seal, again, in January 2009, confirmed this, saying that Hilti was only buying a small quantity of putty sticks. [00:09:16] Speaker 01: And putty sticks are different from the product at issue. [00:09:20] Speaker 01: And that's at appendix 1513. [00:09:22] Speaker 03: Now, Rector Seal... That's it. [00:09:26] Speaker 03: More genuine issues of material fact here. [00:09:30] Speaker 01: Yes, Your Honor. [00:09:33] Speaker 01: Moving forward, to the extent that Rector Seal actually sold products, the products are similar, perhaps, but not the same. [00:09:42] Speaker 01: First of all, on the face, the products are different. [00:09:44] Speaker 01: There's a different, under the Rector Seal product, it requires a 3 1⁄8 inch hole for the ground wire to go through, whereas Hilti's product only requires a slit in the corner. [00:09:58] Speaker 01: Rector Seal's product has [00:10:00] Speaker 01: additional UL certification for accelerated aging and high humidity, HILTI does not. [00:10:06] Speaker 01: And you would expect that they were the same products, they would have the same. [00:10:09] Speaker 01: In addition, HILTI on its own went ahead and had its products tested by UL in 2010. [00:10:16] Speaker 01: Again, something that wouldn't have been necessary had the products been the same. [00:10:22] Speaker 01: And so between the invoices and the Rector Seals' attorneys' representations, we believe that it shows that [00:10:29] Speaker 01: to the extent that any products were being sold, they were not necessarily the products that were the subject of the license. [00:10:37] Speaker 01: Then we get to the license. [00:10:39] Speaker 01: Under the license, it was an essential term that Rector Seal mark its products with fireblocks patent numbers. [00:10:50] Speaker 01: And we know this because, first of all, that section is part of all the other essential terms [00:10:58] Speaker 01: or that requirement is all part of the other essential terms of the contract. [00:11:02] Speaker 03: In other words, the payment... It didn't even apply immediately because the provision says the labeling shall apply upon the exhaustion of inventory labels and upon the reordering of labels for Rector Seal products. [00:11:17] Speaker 03: In other words, it didn't seem to be so immediate because it didn't apply [00:11:26] Speaker 03: to apply upon the execution of the contract. [00:11:33] Speaker 01: And that's correct. [00:11:34] Speaker 01: And what had happened in that case was Rector Seal had additional labels. [00:11:40] Speaker 01: They asked it to be extended to the reorder of the labels. [00:11:44] Speaker 01: The labels were reordered about a month and a half later, we found out in subsequent litigation. [00:11:48] Speaker 01: But that was a condition subsequent. [00:11:54] Speaker 01: and does not negate the fact that this was an essential term of the contract. [00:11:59] Speaker 01: Once the reordering of the labels occurred and Rector Seal failed to mark the products, they lost their rights under the agreement and therefore started, were selling products that were impinging, including those products that were sold to Hilti. [00:12:15] Speaker 01: I see my time has expired, Your Honor. [00:12:17] Speaker 03: We will save your rebuttal time. [00:12:21] Speaker 03: Thank you. [00:12:26] Speaker 00: May it please the court. [00:12:28] Speaker 00: Your Honor, as we ask that the lower court's ruling on summary judgment be affirmed, but its rulings on rule 11 and section 285 motions be reversed because of one simple fact. [00:12:41] Speaker 00: Hilti always has and always did obtain its fire stop box insert from Rector Seale. [00:12:49] Speaker 00: That product is the MetaCock box guard that's identified in the license. [00:12:55] Speaker 03: but labeled differently simply because it's divided by records. [00:13:02] Speaker 03: I'm sorry, Your Honor? [00:13:04] Speaker 03: Is it correct that there were no records to show that? [00:13:10] Speaker 00: No, that's not correct, Your Honor. [00:13:13] Speaker 00: The issue here, with respect to the records, is that the way that Hilti saved its information and kept its database [00:13:20] Speaker 00: of inventory was in a database that you could pull information from, but it would be ad hoc. [00:13:28] Speaker 00: We didn't have actual purchase orders that we would provide that showed that information. [00:13:33] Speaker 00: We would have to pull it from the database and then provide it in a sample PO, which is what HILTI did. [00:13:39] Speaker 00: There are records going back to 2012 that was supplemented by HILTI showing that HILTI was getting the firestop box insert [00:13:48] Speaker 00: from Rector Seal. [00:13:50] Speaker 00: And as Mr. Benchell noted, Rector Seal produced over 200 invoices where it was providing the firestop box insert to Hilti. [00:13:58] Speaker 00: And it's not just the contemporaneous business records. [00:14:02] Speaker 00: There are also multiple declarations and other representations made in writing to FireBlock prior to the filing of this lawsuit that the Metacock box guard is the same product that Rector Seal gives to Hilti as the firestop box insert. [00:14:19] Speaker 00: there hasn't been any dispute that it's guilty, obtains the Firestop box insert from Rector Seal and it's the same product as the Metacost box guard, then it's covered by the license. [00:14:31] Speaker 00: And that's just the fact of it. [00:14:33] Speaker 00: It's true. [00:14:34] Speaker 00: They've gotten the same product from this vendor. [00:14:38] Speaker 00: And there's been a lot of frustration with this litigation, and that's why we'll talk about the Rule 11 and Section 285 motions, because [00:14:48] Speaker 00: There is no other way for us to have proven, for Hilti to have proven to FireBlock that it only sourced this product from RectorSeal. [00:14:59] Speaker 00: Now, Mr. Bentschel says that there were no products, there were no records showing these sales. [00:15:04] Speaker 00: And that's not true. [00:15:05] Speaker 00: There were limited records that were provided to sample PO. [00:15:10] Speaker 00: But whenever there was a request for the documentation of that information back in 2012, Hilti provided it. [00:15:18] Speaker 00: The problem we have here is that Firebox seems to be insisting that the records have to say Metacoff box guard. [00:15:25] Speaker 00: But that's not how Hilti labels the product. [00:15:29] Speaker 00: So we have a declaration from a vice president of Rector's deal, Riley Orger, where he says the Metacoff box guard is the firestop box insert. [00:15:40] Speaker 00: We have a declaration from a couple of declarations from Hilti, from Mr. Schofield, where he says the same thing. [00:15:47] Speaker 00: And then another declaration. [00:15:48] Speaker 00: from Rector Seale again, Ms. [00:15:50] Speaker 00: Ava Ackerman, where she says and repeats the same thing. [00:15:54] Speaker 03: So all these declarations... Mr. Bonilla, is it your view that the burden to show infringement is on the patent owner? [00:16:02] Speaker 03: And if there is, as Helen says, a lack of records, that falls on the patent owner who has the burden to show [00:16:16] Speaker 03: that the products were not all from Rectoseal. [00:16:22] Speaker 00: I do agree with that, Your Honor. [00:16:23] Speaker 00: I think certainly we as the defendant and with the affirmative defensive license need to show that there is a license and that we are entitled to protection under that license, which we've done. [00:16:34] Speaker 00: It fell on Fireblock then to identify one, to identify one insert, at least, that was [00:16:41] Speaker 00: provided by HLP that it got from someplace other than Rector Seal and there is absolutely no evidence of that in the record because there can be no such evidence. [00:16:50] Speaker 03: What about the failure to mark? [00:16:55] Speaker 00: So the failure to mark, there's a couple of issues with that, Your Honor. [00:16:59] Speaker 03: Is it material breach? [00:17:04] Speaker 00: No, Your Honor, we do not think it's a material breach. [00:17:06] Speaker 00: But if it were, that kind of breach, the remedy for fire block is to [00:17:12] Speaker 00: through RectorSeal for breach of contract. [00:17:14] Speaker 00: It's a secondary damages issue that it raises. [00:17:17] Speaker 00: It doesn't turn these products that were licensed into no longer being licensed products. [00:17:22] Speaker 00: Especially, there's a point that your honor raised that the requirements marked was not something that was immediate. [00:17:30] Speaker 00: It was only going to be required once RectorSeal ran out of the inventory it currently had, the labels that it currently had. [00:17:40] Speaker 00: Once this problem was identified to Rector Seal and Hilti, Hilti addressed it and added the patent number to the label for Hilti's products. [00:17:51] Speaker 00: So the patent number was placed there. [00:17:54] Speaker 00: There was some time where it wasn't, but once that issue came to Hilti's attention, it was addressed. [00:18:00] Speaker 00: And additionally, FireBlock's argument, some of what I heard today was the first time I'd heard it. [00:18:06] Speaker 00: But also the arguments that are made in the appeal, these arguments weren't raised to a sufficient level below. [00:18:13] Speaker 00: And probably the best example or best evidence of that is footnote three in Hilti's, excuse me, the fire blocks yellow brief where they said, where they admitted that the authority they were relying upon, they weren't aware of until after they filed their opening brief in this appeal. [00:18:31] Speaker 00: Clearly they didn't raise it below. [00:18:33] Speaker 00: So we think that it was waived. [00:18:34] Speaker 00: Even if that argument wasn't waged, however, the failure to mark does not turn these products into unlicensed products. [00:18:43] Speaker 00: The issue was Dr. Seale stating that it would. [00:18:46] Speaker 02: Mr. Bonilla, Judge Clevenger, what about Fireblocks General Counsel who says that the products are not the same? [00:18:54] Speaker 00: So it wasn't, I'm sorry, you said Fireblocks General Counsel? [00:19:00] Speaker 02: Well, your adversary is arguing in some of the general counsel, pardon me, the attorney, at pages 259, 269, attorney testimony adverse to you on the sameness of the products. [00:19:21] Speaker 00: Well, Your Honor, that wasn't a testimony. [00:19:24] Speaker 00: She was arguing at a hearing on a motion to quash a subpoena to her client, Rector Seale. [00:19:30] Speaker 00: The attorney admitted that she wasn't completely aware of the chemical properties of these products. [00:19:37] Speaker 00: And we've seen Fireblock try to twist the words that she used to make an argument other than what she was making. [00:19:43] Speaker 00: What she said was that opposing counsel, at the time, Mr. Benjamin, is trying to argue that Rector Steel and Hilti are saying these products are identical. [00:19:52] Speaker 00: They're not. [00:19:53] Speaker 00: When she said they're not, she didn't mean the products are identical. [00:19:57] Speaker 00: She meant that Rector Steel and Hilti weren't trying to say, [00:20:00] Speaker 00: that every single product that you test is going to be identical because there can be minor differences in the chemical properties of these various products that are within margins of error for when you're producing them or manufacturing them. [00:20:16] Speaker 00: So they're not different products, but the chemical properties might be a little bit different. [00:20:21] Speaker 00: Now, what FireBlox submitted in its objections to the report recommendation on summary judgment [00:20:28] Speaker 00: It tested a 2017 Hilti insert, a 2020 Hilti insert, and a 2020 RectorSeal box card. [00:20:37] Speaker 00: The 220 products were the same because they had the same source, RectorSeal. [00:20:42] Speaker 00: There was no 2017 RectorSeal product that FireBlock tested. [00:20:48] Speaker 00: But if they had tested it, the products would have been the same because Hilti only ever gets products from RectorSeal. [00:20:56] Speaker 00: And that fact has been made clear to FireBlock [00:20:59] Speaker 00: from years before the litigation was filed, right before the lawsuit was filed, shortly afterward in the rule 11 motion, in the motions for summary judgment. [00:21:08] Speaker 00: Time and again, there have been multiple declarations and documents showing that all of the products that Ilsy gets are from Rector Sue, and they are the Medi-Cock box card. [00:21:19] Speaker 00: There is no evidence from Fireblock that contradicts that. [00:21:24] Speaker 00: The only thing Fireblock has is this disbelief [00:21:29] Speaker 00: They don't believe that it's true. [00:21:32] Speaker 00: They appear to believe that these three individuals, at least the two VPs of record seal and the VP and general counsel at Hilti are lying, but there's no evidence to support that. [00:21:42] Speaker 00: And just not believing the evidence is not a sufficient basis to continue to pursue litigation. [00:21:49] Speaker 00: So that's what takes me then to our rule 11 and section 285 motions. [00:21:55] Speaker 00: At some point, the party has got to have a good space basis [00:21:59] Speaker 00: for alleging claims of infringement. [00:22:03] Speaker 00: And Fireblock has known that this license exists, that Hilti's products are obtained from Richter Steel under the license, and it files to anyway. [00:22:11] Speaker 00: And after giving them dozens more documents supporting our positions, it continued to pursue those claims. [00:22:17] Speaker 00: And it continues to pursue it only without any evidence to support it. [00:22:21] Speaker 00: One of the arguments made by Fireblock is that the case is not exceptional because [00:22:28] Speaker 00: Just because they lose on summary judgment doesn't mean the case is exceptional. [00:22:31] Speaker 00: And that proposition of law is generally true, but they didn't just lose here. [00:22:35] Speaker 00: They never had a chance to win. [00:22:38] Speaker 00: They knew all of these facts from the outset of the litigation, from years before the litigation, and they filed suit anyway. [00:22:46] Speaker 00: And at the summary judgment stage, Magister Judge Payne referred to Hilti's evidence as a plethora of evidence. [00:22:55] Speaker 00: that FireBlock had not identified any evidence to show that these documents that they were saying were missing actually needed to have existed or ever did exist. [00:23:05] Speaker 00: FireBlock also took no depositions, didn't test the veracity of the statements made under penalty of perjury in these declarations. [00:23:13] Speaker 00: So they had no evidence on their side, at no point, while there was a mountain of evidence on the other side. [00:23:19] Speaker 00: And although the court saw that there was no evidence at some judgment stage, [00:23:24] Speaker 00: when it came to addressing the exceptionality of the case, it found now that FireBlock didn't have all the information it needed, or that it had a good reason to not believe the evidence. [00:23:36] Speaker 00: There simply isn't any evidence to support that. [00:23:39] Speaker 00: They just didn't believe whatever our arguments were. [00:23:42] Speaker 00: They just didn't believe that those arguments were true. [00:23:45] Speaker 00: They didn't believe the evidence that we gave them. [00:23:47] Speaker 00: They didn't give any evidence in return. [00:23:50] Speaker 00: I think it's fair to say that they've identified [00:23:53] Speaker 00: some of the changes in the marketing of the products. [00:23:57] Speaker 00: That number wasn't on there. [00:24:00] Speaker 00: I'm running with my rebuttal time, Your Honor, so I'd like to reserve the rest of that time. [00:24:04] Speaker 03: You can do that. [00:24:05] Speaker 03: And of course, you'll only be able to use that if there is something on the cross appeal raised by appellant. [00:24:14] Speaker 03: Understood, Your Honor. [00:24:18] Speaker 03: Mr. Benchel has some rebuttal time. [00:24:21] Speaker 01: Yes, Your Honor. [00:24:22] Speaker 01: I'd like to go to the exceptional case in rule 11 issue. [00:24:27] Speaker 01: The lower court in this particular case did not abuse its discretion in finding this is not an exceptional case or that Fireblock violated its rule 11 obligations. [00:24:38] Speaker 01: On page 27 of the appendix, the court said that the court found that Fireblock's case was weak, which is why it found [00:24:49] Speaker 01: in favor of Hilti for summary judgment, but not so weak that it stands out from the others. [00:24:56] Speaker 01: And that's what Optane tells us is the basis for an exceptional case. [00:25:00] Speaker 01: Rather here, Hilti's argument seems to be that since fireblock loss at summary judgment, this case has to be exceptional. [00:25:09] Speaker 01: And of course, this would lead to an absurd result that any loss at summary judgment would render the case exceptional. [00:25:17] Speaker 01: And Mr. Bonilla just said, [00:25:19] Speaker 01: that fire block never had a chance to win to begin with. [00:25:28] Speaker 01: But the court disagreed with that. [00:25:30] Speaker 01: The court recognized that fire block did not have all the information it needed. [00:25:35] Speaker 01: And it said that in view of the missing information, plus the evidence that fire block acquired during the pre-suit investigation, that helps justify and explain fire block's belief [00:25:49] Speaker 01: that the decision for its decision to file the suit, and that's page 35 of the appendix. [00:25:55] Speaker 01: The further evidence developed during discovery supports Fireblock's belief. [00:26:00] Speaker 01: Now, Mr. Bonilla talked about the fact that Fireblock had no evidence. [00:26:05] Speaker 01: That's simply not true. [00:26:07] Speaker 01: Aside from the non-evidence and the lack of evidence that the court acknowledged was unusual. [00:26:16] Speaker 01: We had Rector Seals attorney's admission. [00:26:18] Speaker 01: Now, Mr. Bonilla said that she was unfamiliar with those documents. [00:26:22] Speaker 01: In fact, what she said during the hearing when she was asked why she was there quashing a UL certificate, UL subpoena, the Rector Seal attorney said that she had not been privy to the UL documents. [00:26:40] Speaker 01: But certainly she was making representations pursuant to the rule of an obligation that said that these are not the same product. [00:26:48] Speaker 01: In addition, UL sent emails, I'm sorry, Rector Seal sent emails to UL saying they were no longer making the product. [00:26:57] Speaker 01: Now this ceased the multilisting in 2008. [00:27:00] Speaker 01: That multilisting did not begin again until 2019. [00:27:04] Speaker 01: That would have been after this case was started. [00:27:08] Speaker 01: So based on that, the fire block was well within its right to not only bring this case, but to continue to pursue it. [00:27:19] Speaker 01: Turning quickly to the Rule 11 issue, we're a little confused why, and I think the court was, lower court was too, why Hilti persists in this Rule 11. [00:27:30] Speaker 01: Summary judgment was found in their favor. [00:27:34] Speaker 01: The case was dismissed with prejudice. [00:27:37] Speaker 01: That's what they were seeking through Rule 11. [00:27:40] Speaker 01: So it seems to us that their Rule 11 motion is moot at this point. [00:27:45] Speaker 01: However, we agree with the lower court that Hilti failed to identify which pleading and what part of the pleading was sanctionable under Rule 11. [00:27:58] Speaker 01: And on those basis, we ask you to reverse the finding of summary judgment in favor of Hilti and affirm [00:28:06] Speaker 01: the lower court's decision with regard to the exceptional case. [00:28:09] Speaker 01: Thank you, Your Honors. [00:28:11] Speaker 03: Thank you, Mr. Benchel. [00:28:12] Speaker 03: Mr. Bonilla has some rebuttal time on the cross-peel. [00:28:19] Speaker 00: Thank you, Your Honor. [00:28:21] Speaker 00: Mr. Benchel noted that on page 27 of the appendix, Judge Schrader below called Fireblocks case weak. [00:28:27] Speaker 00: He didn't just call it weak. [00:28:28] Speaker 00: He said it was undoubtedly weak. [00:28:31] Speaker 00: And that reminds me of the Inventor Holdings versus Ted Bath and Beyond case. [00:28:36] Speaker 00: In that case, during the argument on that appeal, it was a 285 appeal after a patent had been found ineligible under 101, Judge Chan, during the argument, noted that Inventor Holdings' case was woefully weak. [00:28:52] Speaker 00: And then in the opinion, it was written as objectively weak. [00:28:56] Speaker 00: Here we have a federal judge noting that the plaintiff's case was undoubtedly weak. [00:29:03] Speaker 00: And that's important, because that's what makes this case [00:29:05] Speaker 00: stand out from others. [00:29:07] Speaker 00: It's not just that fire block loss. [00:29:09] Speaker 00: It's not just that the arguments were weak or not supported or that there was no evidence or that the evidence that was provided was referred to by the lower court as gross speculation. [00:29:21] Speaker 00: It's that putting all those things together, you have this undoubtedly weak case that was undoubtedly weak when it was filed. [00:29:29] Speaker 00: And the point about the Rule 11 motion is actually an apt one. [00:29:35] Speaker 00: The point of Rule 11 motion was to end the case then, to be done with the case at that earlier stage, because there was no ground for it to continue. [00:29:45] Speaker 00: The statements in the pleading were false. [00:29:48] Speaker 00: There was no evidence to support them, nor could there ever be evidence to support them. [00:29:53] Speaker 00: And yet, we find ourselves here, months and months later, still litigating this issue, still expending resources to try to prove, [00:30:04] Speaker 00: a negative, that there was no other insert that he'll take out from anybody that wasn't Rector Steel. [00:30:09] Speaker 00: At some point, there's got to be good faith basis for filing claims. [00:30:14] Speaker 00: There was no such basis here when this case was filed. [00:30:17] Speaker 00: And the evidence that Mr. Benchell just noted, that evidence came during the litigation. [00:30:23] Speaker 00: So they never had that before. [00:30:25] Speaker 00: And every time they pointed to something, like the Rector Steel attorney's comments, we had evidence to explain it. [00:30:32] Speaker 00: There was a clerical error or [00:30:34] Speaker 00: of in particular here, paragraph 12 of Ms. [00:30:38] Speaker 00: Ackerman's declaration. [00:30:39] Speaker 00: This is the appendix page 1009. [00:30:42] Speaker 00: In paragraph 12, she explains that while the packing is different, a detailed physical and chemical comparison of a single private label insert to a single box guard could exhibit immaterial differences within the bounds of typical manufacturing tolerances. [00:30:59] Speaker 00: She goes on to say that the private label insert that Rector Steel has sold to Hilti is the same as the product Rector Steel sells in the market as a box set. [00:31:08] Speaker 00: We've told Hilti that from the beginning. [00:31:10] Speaker 00: That fact was true then. [00:31:11] Speaker 00: It is true now. [00:31:13] Speaker 00: They never had any evidence to contradict that. [00:31:16] Speaker 00: And yet, we've had to go through litigation, go through the summary judgment process, and now this appeal. [00:31:21] Speaker 00: There was no good basis to file it, and there is none to continue litigating it. [00:31:26] Speaker 00: And that is the kind of case that stands out from others. [00:31:29] Speaker 00: And therefore, we ask this court to reverse the lower court's decision with respect to the rule 11 in section 285 motions. [00:31:36] Speaker 03: Thank you, Mr. Bonilla. [00:31:37] Speaker 03: We thank both counsel and then the case is submitted. [00:31:46] Speaker 00: The honorable court is adjourned until tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.