Quinn Emanuel Fights Patent Contempt Ruling at Federal Circuit

Judges at the Federal Circuit appeared likely to overturn a Virginia court’s order holding the law firm Quinn Emanuel in contempt based on its actions defending a patent suit that culminated with a $481 million enhanced-damages award against its client.

During oral argument Monday, the three-judge panel said the contempt order, which came without prior briefing or a hearing, seemed to violate Quinn’s constitutional rights, requiring either reversal or a remand.

“There’s clearly a due process problem here in the sense that she didn’t have a hearing,” Judge Timothy B. Dyk said of Judge M. Hannah Lauck’s order in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The ultimate ruling, which enhanced damages in the case by nearly $300 million, “looks like criminal contempt,” he added.

Lauck found the firm in contempt in Columbia University’s suit against Quinn client NortonLifeLock Inc. after it refused a March 2022 order to quickly disclose its attorneys’ communications with a fact witness and former client named Marc Dacier who had left Norton—now doing business as Gen Digital Inc.—for a university position in Saudi Arabia.

Dyk pushed Columbia’s lawyer, Jeff Wall of Sullivan & Cromwell on Lauck’s order to release the records in the public docket, asking if it “was invalid because there was attorney-client privilege, correct?”

Wall responded that the district court, even acting on the judge’s own initiative, has the authority to investigate “misconduct before it involving lawyers,” he said. Lauck, he continued, was concerned Dacier was refusing to testify at the trial but separately indicated to a Columbia professor at a conference that he’d had misgivings about certain events relating to the patent dispute.

Judge Sharon Prost emphasized that the order at the heart of the dispute, giving Quinn 24 hours to produce years of communications with Dacier, seemed to come out of nowhere.

“Suddenly there’s a footnote or something that issues a disclosure order sua sponte, not raised by either party and not briefed,” she said. “Shouldn’t the parties have had the ability to present argument on that question,” she asked Wall.

Despite the initial time pressure, Wall said Quinn ultimately had ample opportunity to raise arguments about why the disclosure was problematic—but instead it stonewalled the district court.

There were “more than a half dozen rounds of briefing” and “more than a half dozen hearings,” where Quinn could’ve made its case, but it refused to explain why Dacier wouldn’t appear at trial, he said. It was reasonable, Wall argued, for the judge to conclude that Quinn had “deprived Columbia of some evidence of litigation misconduct that is relevant to the enhanced fees and damages questions.”

“Quinn has not in this case covered itself in glory in the way it behaved,” responded Dyk, who nevertheless seemed unconvinced. “That’s a different question than whether the order is valid or invalid.”

The questions for Quinn’s lawyer, Paul of Clement & Murphy, were easier, with Prost asking him whether the contempt finding alone should be scrapped or if the court also needed to separately invalidate the preceding disclosure order.

Judge Jimmie V. Reyna questioned Clement about why Norton hadn’t done more than it did to fight the disclosure order, though the judge seemed satisfied with the lawyer’s answer that it refused to comply and filed a motion to reconsider that order within a week.

Reyna also joined Dyk and Prost in asking pointed questions about the district court’s approach.

“Shouldn’t the court have issued an order to show cause” that would’ve allowed for briefing before Quinn was under an obligation to turn over its emails with Dacier, he asked. “These are significant rights we’re talking about.”

Wall ultimately argued the Federal Circuit shouldn’t simply reverse if it finds fault with the lower court, but instead give Lauck the opportunity to address it, emphasizing that Quinn’s conduct was something she said “she’d never seen in her 20-plus years on the bench.”

Clement argued relitigating the matter after a remand would be difficult, given that Dacier has now been in further discussions with Columbia’s lawyers and Norton has changed counsel. “I think it’s hard to unring the bell, he said.”

Wall disagreed.

“I know exactly what a do-over would look like,” he said. “I don’t know why the other side thinks it’s tough.”

The case is Trs. of Columbia Univ. v. Gen Digital Inc., Fed. Cir., Nos. 24-1243, 24-1244, oral argument 1/5/26.