Discovery Cutoff Is Not Your Discovery Plan
Nike, Inc. v. Skechers U.S.A., Inc. (C.D. Cal. July 24, 2026)
Playbook Principle
Serve important discovery early enough to resolve the dispute it may create, not merely early enough to call the request timely.
What Happened
Skechers served an inventorship contention interrogatory exactly one month before fact discovery closed, making Nike’s response due on the final day. Although the request was technically timely, the court found Skechers had not been diligent because it had known inventorship was important early in the case and left no time to resolve a motion to compel. The court therefore refused to reopen discovery.
What This Means
A discovery cutoff is an endpoint, not a target date for serving important requests. The real deadline should account for the full dispute cycle: response time, review, meet-and-confer efforts, briefing, and time for the court to rule. That is especially important for issues already identified as significant. Waiting for late depositions may sometimes be justified, but the court viewed the timing problem here as self-created because Skechers had also waited to schedule the inventor depositions.
The lesson is neutral. Patent owners and accused infringers both face case-critical issues that can become difficult to pursue if discovery is technically timely but practically unusable.
What You Can Do
- Identify discovery tied to potentially dispositive or expert-driven issues early, and assign internal deadlines well before the court’s cutoff.
- Work backward from the time needed to compel a meaningful response, not merely from the response period.
- Document why genuinely late discovery could not reasonably have been pursued earlier.
- Revisit known evidence gaps throughout fact discovery, particularly before scheduling key depositions and serving contention interrogatories.
How We Can Help
Discovery problems often become visible only after the calendar has eliminated the best solution. We help clients sequence technical, damages, and contention discovery around the issues most likely to matter later, while preserving flexibility as the record develops.