Court credits H5 review of almost 12 million records as efficient

What happened

Gabriel Technologies and Trace Technologies sued Qualcomm and two co-defendants, seeking over $1 billion in damages. The court ruled for the defendants and later found that the plaintiffs had pursued objectively baseless claims in bad faith. The defendants had collected almost 12 million records. They paid H5 to sort the records into responsive and non-responsive documents with its proprietary technology. Contract attorneys at Black Letter Discovery then reviewed the responsive documents for confidentiality, privilege and relevance. Ruling on fees on 1 February 2013, Judge Anthony J. Battaglia found that the H5 process minimized the work left for the contract attorneys. He found that counsel's choice of a more efficient and less time-consuming method was reasonable. He wrote that counsel seemingly reduced fees and attorney hours by reviewing electronically at the outset. He held that the $2,829,349.10 for the algorithm-driven review was reasonable and included it in a fee award of $12,465,331.01. The court measured no saving, and the order does not show whether the algorithm learned from data. The Federal Circuit affirmed the award on 18 March 2014.