Three weeks after Blue Pumpkin Software Inc. won a patent suit, the Sunnyvale-based company sued its former lawyers, claiming they provided inadequate counsel in the early phase of the case.
Blue Pumpkin is seeking $2.5 million in damages from James Pooley, David Dolkas and their firms, Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy and Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich, respectively. In a Nov. 6 complaint filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, the company alleged that the two attorneys did not introduce relevant information during the Markman hearing, a pretrial proceeding in which a judge decides the scope of a patent's claims.
The defendants "failed to investigate the prosecution history" of the patent, Blue Pumpkin states in its complaint. As a result, the judge "rendered a claim construction that was inaccurate."
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