District Court Denies Motion To Exclude Expert Where Conjoint Consumer Research Survey Was Appropriately Tied To Asserted Patents

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Law Firm: Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP
• Subject Matter: Consumer Protection, Intellectual Property, Consumer Law, Patent
• Author: Mr Stanley Gibson
• Published date: 08 May 2023

In this patent infringement action, defendant Carvana sought to exclude the plaintiff Estech's expert report and opinions regarding a conjoint survey. Carvana moved to exclude the expert's opinion asserting that the survey failed to satisfy the reliability requirements of Rule 702 and Daubert.

As explained by the district court, Estech hired its expert, Dr. R. Sukumar, to "perform a conjoint analysis'a consumer research survey method'used to "determine customers' willingness to pay for features represented in this patent infringement lawsuit." In his report, Dr. Sukumar explained that conjoint analysis provides a way to determine how much consumers value a particular feature of a multi-feature product. Dr. Sukumar then used a conjoint analysis in an effort to quantify a difference in market value for a voice over IP (VoIP) solution/service based on seven attributes: five attributes corresponding to patented features, one distractor attribute, and one price attribute. Using information obtained from the survey, Dr. Sukumar calculated numerical values representing consumer willingness to pay for each of the five attributes corresponding to the patented features.

In its motion, Carvana argued that the conjoint survey was unreliable because the features it ascribed to the patents were not directly tied to the patented technology, relying on Fractus, S.A. v. Samsung. 6:09-CV-203-LED-JDL, 2011 WL 7563820, at *1 (E.D. Tex. Apr. 29, 2011) (Granting motion to exclude customer surveys attributing a certain dollar value and identifying importance of percentage of cell phones with internal as opposed to external antennas because "the surveys do not measure how consumers value the purported advantages provided by Plaintiff's technology.").

The district court disagreed, finding that "the attributes identified by Dr...