Automated e-discoveryis suddenly hot. Just witness the frenzy of sniping among competitors when Recommind, Inc., announced in June that it had received a patent for the predictive coding automated e-discovery process used in its product, Axcelerate On-Demand. Rivals Equivio Inc. and OrcaTec LLC immediately fired back that the Recommind patent only covered a narrow process and that their products fell outside the scope of Recommind’s claims.
“Recommind’s exclusivity claim was like saying you received a patent for potato peeling, when in fact all you got was a patent for a particular part of a pretty potato peeler for peeling pink potatoes,” wrote Warwick Sharp, Equivio’s vice president of marketing and business development, on his online blog.
