eDiscovery Dispute Highlights ABBYY-Nuance OCR Patent Suit

This is kind of ironic - and thanks to our friends at Harvey Spencer Associates for connecting us with the link to this article, but it seems ABBYY has been ordered to pay Nuance $135,000 in a dispute over document discovery. Yes, it seems the two OCR ISVs are arguing over the exchange of documents.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, whose office is in San Francisco where Nuance's lawsuit against ABBYY and Lexmark (Lexmark licenses ABBYY technology) over OCR patent infringement is being heard, ordered "Abbyy to pay Nuance $135,000 in sanctions for taking so much time handing over requested documents that the court reopened discovery and Nuance retook depositions that had already been completed."

Also from the article "ABBYY contended that it disclosed the information late because it was tied up responding to 'Nuance's multiple other discovery requests seeking massive amounts of irrelevant information,' but Judge White didn't buy that excuse. 'The court does not find the delay in production justified considering the scope of this case and the sheer amount of lawyering and the parties' investment of time and effort,' he said."

Alright, so it appears the game is on. This case has been in court since 2008, but it seems some headway is finally being made. According to the article, "All the parties were ordered to attend a settlement conference to be held no later than July 5."

If you remember, one of the predictions we made in DIR to start the year was "Some major market developments driven by ongoing patent lawsuits." Stay tuned.

Upland's Plans for Filebound

It sounds like it will basically be business as usual, at least initially for FileBound Software, which was recently acquired by an organization now known as Upland Software. FileBound is a long-time document and image management ISV that is probably best known for its SaaS or cloud-based offering, but offers on-site systems as well, and primarily sells through a value-added reseller (VAR) channel. Primarily through an acquisition strategy, Upland is building a portfolio of products in an emerging market labeled by Gartner as "project and portfolio management (PPM)," but is also looking at adjacent spaces like BPM, IT planning, resource management, and product life cycle management.

I just got off a call with Ludwig Melik, the president of Upland, who owned one of the original two companies acquired by the investment firm Silverback Enterprise Group when it decided to pursue PPM and broader spaces. Prior to the Filebound acquisition, Silverback's PPM group was known as PowerSteering Software, which was the name of one of the legacy acquired companies. "We decided to rename the organization Upland, because we wanted to start with a clean slate," Melik told me.

However, that does not mean that Upland is throwing out the successful business models of the companies it has bought. "With FileBound, we bought a successful company that is profitable and growing," Melik said. "That number one rule in that case is to do no harm.

"The best way to surmise how we are going to manage FileBound going forward is to look at the past. If you look at what has happened to Tenrox (Melik's company) and PowerSteering, both product development teams are still in place. That is the same path we will take with FileBound, and we will look for opportunities for members of the FileBound team to take a greater role across the company. For example, Sean Nathaniel, who was the CIO at FileBound, has been named Upland's VP of product development."

Upland also plans to maintain FileBound's VAR channel and if and when there is opportunity, to introduce some of its other offerings to that channel. "Our goal is to maintain FileBound's current areas of strength, to continue to develop compelling products for its customers and partners, and to take advantage of some of the increased resources that a larger organizations like Upland can bring to bear in areas like marketing," Melik said.