Neural AI, LLC v. Tesla Inc. — Entry #11: Response in Opposition to Motion, filed by Tesla Inc., re 6 CORRECTED MOTION to Compel Compliance With Subpoena Served on Third Party Tesla, Inc
Case: Neural AI, LLC v. Tesla Inc. txwd · 7:26-cv-00318
filed August 17, 2026
What this document is
Docket entry #11 · filed August 24, 2026
Response in Opposition to Motion, filed by Tesla Inc., re 6 CORRECTED MOTION to Compel Compliance With Subpoena Served on Third Party Tesla, Inc. filed by Petitioner Neural AI, LLC (Attachments: # 1 Declaration of Ashraf Fawzy, # 2 Exhibit 22, # 3 Exhibit 23, # 4 Proposed Order)(Zheng, Jun) (Entered: 08/24/2026)
Who is involved
- Neural AI, LLC
- Tesla Inc.
Why we have it
We follow this case because it names a company we track, although that company is not a party:
- CoreWeave: its name “CoreWeave” appears in a filing in this case.
…following third- parties in this district: xAI, Meta, CoreWeave, Google, and Oracle. See, e.g., Case Nos. 7:26-mc-…
A free copy from the RECAP archive of federal court filings (mirrored at the Internet Archive), retrieved September 29, 2026. Federal court filings are public records.
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EXHIBIT 22
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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
MIDLAND/ODESSA DIVISION
NEURAL AI, LLC,
Petitioner, Case No. 7:26-mc-00241
v.
[Underlying Case: USDC
AMAZON.COM, INC., Western District of Texas No.
7:24-cv-00221-ADA-DTG]
Respondent.
NEURAL AI’S MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF ITS MOTION TO COMPEL
COMPLIANCE WITH SUBPOENA SERVED ON THIRD-PARTY AMAZON.COM, INC.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
A. FACTUAL BACKGROUND ....................................................................................................1
1. The Underlying Litigation ...................................................................................................1
2. The Rule 45 Subpoena to Amazon and Amazon’s Initial Objections .................................2
3. NAI’s Meet-and-Confer Efforts and Narrowing and Amazon’s Continued
Non-Compliance ..................................................................................................................2
4. Procedural History ...............................................................................................................4
B. THE COURT HAS JURISDICTION OVER THIS DISPUTE BECAUSE
THE PLACE OF COMPLIANCE IN AUSTIN IS PROPER. ..................................................4
C. AMAZON MUST PRODUCE DOCUMENTS RESPONSIVE TO THE SUBPOENA. .........6
1. The subpoenaed materials are relevant and proportional to the needs of the case. .............7
2. Amazon’s burden objections are unsupported. ....................................................................9
3. Amazon cannot continue to defer production with vague promises. .................................10
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TABLE OF AUTHORITIES
Page(s)
Cases
611 Carpenter LLC v. Atlantic Casualty Ins. Co.,
2024 WL 1977160 (W.D. Tex. April 30, 2024) ....................................................................7, 9
Conservation L. Found., Inc. v. Equilon Enters. LLC,
No. CV 17-396-WES, 2025 WL 2821238 (D.R.I. Oct. 3, 2025) ..............................................5
Linet Americas, Inc. v. Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc.,
No. 21-cv-6890, 2025 WL 889579 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 27, 2025).....................................................6
Meritage Homes, LLC v. AIG Specialty Ins. Co.,
No. 1:23-MC-00944-DII, 2024 WL 221448 (W.D. Tex. Jan. 18, 2024) ...................................4
Phila. Indem. Ins. Co. v. Odessa Family YMCA,
No. 7:20-CV-00134-DC, 2020 WL 6484069 (W.D. Tex. June 26, 2020) ................................4
Trs. of Bos. Univ. v. Everlight Elecs. Co.,
No. 12-CV-11935-PBS, 2014 WL 12792496 (D. Mass. Sept. 8, 2014)................................5, 6
Velocity Pat. LLC v. FCA US LLC,
No. 13 CV 8419, 2017 WL 11893112 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 2, 2017) ................................................5
Waller v. Jet Specialty, Inc.,
No. 23-CV-00121-DC-RCG, 2024 WL 7050192 (W.D. Tex. Nov. 19, 2024) .........................7
Rules
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 ...........................................................................................7, 10
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45 ....................................................................................... passim
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Despite eight months of good-faith efforts from petitioner Neural AI, LLC (“NAI”) to
negotiate with third-party subpoena recipient and respondent Amazon.com, Inc. (“Amazon”),
Amazon still has not produced a single document in response to the subpoena NAI served on
October 15, 2025. During that eight-month period, NAI sought discovery directly from the
defendant in the underlying case NVIDIA Corporation (“NVIDIA”), used information learned
from NVIDIA to try to guide Amazon’s search for responsive documents, provided additional
explanation of the infringing technology, and ultimately narrowed its subpoena to only 9 priority
requests for production. Still, Amazon has not committed to producing a single document and
instead only agreed generally to investigate the existence of possibly responsive documents and
information. That sort of investigation is something that should have occurred months ago when
Amazon first received the subpoena. Its vague promises to search now—eight months after the
subpoena was served and less than two months before fact discovery closes in the underlying
case—is too little too late. NAI respectfully requests that the Court issue an order compelling
Amazon to comply with the Rule 45 subpoena NAI served on October 15 and requiring production
of documents responsive to NAI’s nine requests for production by a date certain prior to the close
of fact discovery in the underlying case.
A. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
1. The Underlying Litigation
The underlying action—Neural AI, LLC v. NVIDIA Corporation 7:24-cv-00221-ADA-
DTG (W.D. Tex.)—involves claims of direct, indirect, and induced patent infringement by
NVIDIA relating to U.S. Patent Nos. 8,648,867; RE49,461; and RE48,438 (the “Patents-in-Suit”).
The Patents-in-Suit teach systems and methods for GPU-accelerated computing technology. NAI
alleges that NVIDIA’s hardware (i.e., its GPUs and servers) and software (i.e., NeMo, TensorRT,
and cuDNN) infringe the Patents-in-Suit and that NAI encourages its customers to combine those
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products in an infringing manner. Amazon is one of NVIDIA’s largest customers and a real-world
integrator of the accused GPU-acceleration hardware and software. NAI has subpoenaed multiple
of NVIDIA’s customers seeking documents in their unique possession to support its allegations of
indirect and induced infringement. NAI seeks production of those documents prior to August 11,
2026, the close of fact discovery in the underlying case.
2. The Rule 45 Subpoena to Amazon and Amazon’s Initial Objections
NAI served its Rule 45 subpoena on Amazon on October 15, 2026. NAI noticed the place
of compliance at 100 Congress Avenue, Suite 2000, Austin, Texas 78701. See Portuguese Decl.,
Exhibit A at 6. NAI chose this place of compliance because Amazon has a significant presence
and conducts business in Austin, Texas through its corporate office buildings at 11501 Alterra
Parkway, Austin, Texas 78758. See Portuguese Decl., Exhibit B. This Amazon corporate office is
only 12 miles away from the place of compliance, and Amazon currently has 1058 job listings for
in-person roles at its Austin location. See Portuguese Decl., Exhibit C. The initial subpoena
contained 20 requests relating to Amazon’s purchase, use, incorporation, sale, or development of
products containing or depending on the accused NVIDIA hardware and software. Exhibit A. The
requests were limited in time to the relevant damages period in the underlying case, from
September 13, 2018 to the present, and limited in scope to U.S.-based or U.S.-directed activity. Id.
Amazon served objections on November 13, 2025. See Portuguese Decl., Exhibit D.
Amazon objected to the place of compliance because it was more than 100 miles from Amazon’s
headquarters in Seattle, Washington. Id. at 3. As to the substance of the requests, Amazon refused
to search for or produce documents responsive to any request for production. See generally id.
3. NAI’s Meet-and-Confer Efforts and Narrowing and Amazon’s Continued
Non-Compliance
The parties first met and conferred on November 19, 2025. At that time and Amazon’s
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request, NAI agreed to seek additional information from NVIDIA first. NVIDIA subsequently
produced documents and information confirming that Amazon is a significant NVIDIA customer
but containing gaps about how Amazon actually used itself or bundled, configured, and sold the
accused products to its customers.
Shortly after NAI had received documents confirming that Amazon was a significant
NVIDIA customer and partner, Neural AI re-engaged Amazon on April 3, 2026, and the parties
conferred again on April 13, 2026. On April 27, 2026, NAI substantially narrowed the subpoena
to nine priority requests (Nos. 5, 7-10, 12-14, and 19). See Portuguese Decl., Exhibit E at 4-6. At
the same time, NAI provided more detailed descriptions of the accused functionality and the type
of bundling of NVIDIA hardware and software NAI is interested in and, to help Amazon in its
search for responsive information, identified the specific NVIDIA hardware products Amazon had
acquired during the relevant period. The parties met and conferred again on May 21 but, as of that
meet and confer, Amazon still had done little to no investigation into how it uses the NVIDIA
products it purchased or what responsive documents it may have.
On June 4, 2026, Amazon’s counsel wrote by email that Amazon was still “in the process
of making our way through the orgs” and “figuring out whether and where they have the
information.” See Exhibit E at 1. But for the first time—over 7 months after Amazon received the
subpoena—Amazon finally stated it “had the lay of the land” and would “complete a reasonable
search and provide you with what we’re able to find three weeks from tomorrow.” Id. The parties
conferred on June 5, at which time NAI learned that Amazon’s commitment to search for
documents was illusory. Amazon still did not know if the information it was compiling was
“garbage or not” and could not commit that it would actually produce any responsive documents
at the conclusion of its three-week search.
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4. Procedural History
On June 1, 2026, while the parties were continuing to meet and confer, NAI sent Amazon
a dispute chart pursuant to Section IV of the Court’s March 5, 2025, Standing Order Governing
Proceedings (OGP)—Patent Cases (“OGP”). Because Amazon was a third party to the underlying
dispute, NAI asked Amazon to respond to the dispute chart in 7 days, rather than the 3 days
contemplated in the OGP. On June 9, 2026, NAI sent an updated dispute chart taking into account
the information Amazon provided on the parties’ most recent meet and confer. Amazon completed
its portion of the dispute chart on June 12, 2026. It objected to the dispute chart process and
jurisdiction as threshold issues and on the merits.
NAI submitted the dispute chart to the Court on June 15, 2026. The Court held a hearing
on the dispute chart on June 17, 2026. At the hearing, the Court instructed NAI to file a motion to
compel, rather than use the dispute chart process. See Portuguese Decl., Exhibit F at 37:14-38:6.
B. THE COURT HAS JURISDICTION OVER THIS DISPUTE BECAUSE THE
PLACE OF COMPLIANCE IN AUSTIN IS PROPER.
The District Court for the Western District of Texas is the proper court to resolve Neural
AI’s motion to compel because Rule 45 directs the serving party to seek an order compelling
production in “the court for the district where compliance is required.” Fed. R. Civ. P.
45(d)(2)(B)(i); see also Meritage Homes, LLC v. AIG Specialty Ins. Co., No. 1:23-MC-00944-DII,
2024 WL 221448, at *4 (W.D. Tex. Jan. 18, 2024); Phila. Indem. Ins. Co. v. Odessa Family YMCA,
No. 7:20-CV-00134-DC, 2020 WL 6484069, at *1 (W.D. Tex. June 26, 2020). The place of
compliance for the subpoena at issue is located at 100 Congress Ave., Ste. 2000, Austin, Texas
78701, which is located within this District. This Court’s jurisdiction, then, turns on whether the
place of compliance listed in the subpoena is proper. See Exhibit F at 32:3-5 (Amazon agrees with
NAI that the analysis “boils down to whether the place of compliance is correct.”).
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For document subpoenas, Rule 45(c)(2)(A) permits production “at a place within 100 miles
of where the person resides, is employed, or regularly transacts business in person.” The issuing
party is not limited to selecting a place of compliance only within 100 miles of the recipient’s
headquarters. See, e.g., Conservation L. Found., Inc. v. Equilon Enters. LLC, No. CV 17-396-
WES, 2025 WL 2821238, at *1 (D.R.I. Oct. 3, 2025) (rejecting argument that the place where an
entity “regularly transactions business in person” is limited to the corporate headquarters because
it “ignores the plain language of the Rule.”). Rule 45 could have stated such a narrow requirement,
but it did not. Instead, the Rule allows for a place of compliance within 100 miles of any location
where the recipient transacts business in person. For a company like Amazon that conducts
significant business nationally, a party issuing a subpoena has many choices.
The place of compliance is not limited to a location where potential document custodians
are located. First, such a rule is logically non-sensical because the party serving the subpoena
cannot know where the custodians possessing relevant documents are located before serving the
subpoena. Rule 45 cannot require that a party serving a subpoena on a large, nation-wide company
play a guessing game with the compliance location and cross its fingers that the custodian with
documents responsive to its subpoena is located near the place of compliance, rather than at a
regional office across the country. Second, courts routinely reject this very argument. See, e.g.,
Velocity Pat. LLC v. FCA US LLC, No. 13 CV 8419, 2017 WL 11893112, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Nov. 2,
2017) (holding that the place of compliance was proper within 100 miles of any of the subpoena
target’s regional offices or facilities and rejecting argument that, “regardless of its other locations,”
its headquarters was the “only location where it stores” requested documents); Trs. of Bos. Univ.
v. Everlight Elecs. Co., No. 12-CV-11935-PBS, 2014 WL 12792496, at *3 (D. Mass. Sept. 8,
2014) (holding that place of compliance in Boston was proper because Apple had two offices and
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four retail locations in Massachusetts and rejecting Apple’s argument that its headquarters and
relevant documents are in Cupertino, California). “Rule 45(c) says nothing about the location of
documents subpoenaed.” Trs. of Bos. Univ., 2014 WL 12792496, at *3.
Amazon’s argument that it can produce documents only within 100 miles of its Seattle,
Washington headquarters makes even less sense given its role as one of “the largest cloud
infrastructure providers in the country.” Exhibit F at 36:11-15. Information stored on the cloud,
rather than on local hard drives, can be accessed from anywhere, including by Amazon’s
employees in the Austin location. Given recent technology advances, largely driven by Amazon’s
own cloud business, it is a fiction that Amazon would physically produce documents at the Austin
address listed as the place of compliance; of course, Amazon will send responsive documents to
NAI electronically. But even if Amazon had to produce physical documents, its Austin-based
employees could access the documents remotely, print them out, and deliver them only 12 miles
from Amazon’s Austin office to the place of compliance.
Here, the Austin place of compliance satisfies Rule 45(c)(2)(A). Amazon regularly
transacts business in person in Austin through its corporate office and technology hub on Alterra
Parkway, only 12 miles away from the place of compliance. This corporate office location is not
empty or dormant. Amazon’s own job postings reflected 1058 open Austin positions as of June
23, 2026. See Exhibit C; see also Linet Americas, Inc. v. Hill-Rom Holdings, Inc., No. 21-cv-6890,
2025 WL 889579, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 27, 2025) (relying on the subpoena recipient’s job postings
for positions in Chicago to find that a place of compliance within 100 miles of Chicago was
proper). Because the subpoena’s listed place of compliance in Austin is proper, this Court has
jurisdiction to resolve this motion to compel.
C. AMAZON MUST PRODUCE DOCUMENTS RESPONSIVE TO THE
SUBPOENA.
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Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 provides that a party may obtain discovery regarding
any nonprivileged matter that is relevant to the parties’ claims or defenses and proportional to the
needs of the case. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(1). Where, as here, a non-party refuses discovery in
response to a validly issued subpoena, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45 provides the Court for
the district where compliance is required with broad discretion to compel the production of
documents and information from third parties. Fed. R. Civ. P. 45(d)(2)(B)(i); Waller v. Jet
Specialty, Inc., No. 23-CV-00121-DC-RCG, 2024 WL 7050192, at *1 (W.D. Tex. Nov. 19, 2024).
Once a party moving to compel discovery establishes that the materials are relevant or will lead to
the discovery of admissible evidence, the burden rests upon the nonparty resisting discovery to
substantiate its objections. 611 Carpenter LLC v. Atlantic Casualty Ins. Co., 2024 WL 1977160,
at *1 (W.D. Tex. April 30, 2024) (granting party’s motion to compel non-party subpoena). The
non-party “must state with specificity the objection and how it relates to the particular request
being opposed, and not merely that it is overly broad and burdensome.” Id.
1. The subpoenaed materials are relevant and proportional to the needs of the
case.
Neural AI’s narrowed requests seek documents that are directly relevant to proving how
NVIDIA’s accused GPU-acceleration technology is deployed and used in real-world systems.
Amazon is one of NVIDIA’s most significant customers and a large-scale integrator of the accused
hardware and software. Publicly available information on Amazon’s website indicate that Amazon
and NVIDIA have a deep partnership, collaborating on the deployment of more than one million
NVIDIA GPUs across Amazon Web Services Regions.1 See Portuguese Decl., Exhibit G at 1.
The narrowed requests target nine specific categories of documents:
1 NVIDIA’s confidential documents also demonstrate the close relationship between
NVIDIA and Amazon, but NAI cites only public documents to avoid the need for sealing.
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RFP 5 seeks documents sufficient to identify Amazon’s products or services that depend on
the accused technology.
RFPs 7, 8, 9 and 10 seek technical documents, source code, configuration files, development
notes and other documents sufficient to show how Amazon’s products or services implement,
incorporate, use, integrate, invoke, or interact with the accused NVIDIA products.
RFP 12 seeks communications with NVIDIA relating to the setup, integration, customization,
support, or use of the accused NVIDIA products.
RFP 13 seeks Amazon’s internal documents or reports reflecting the benefits or business value
derived from its use of the accused NVIDIA products.
RFP 14 seeks the revenue, usage, or subscription data for Amazon’s products or services that
relied on accused NVIDIA products.
RFP 19 seeks internal engineering documentation sufficient to show the design, development,
or operation of Amazon’s products that use, incorporate, or were developed in connection with
accused NVIDIA products.
See Exhibit A. Each category is directly relevant to proving how the accused products operate in
commercial deployments and how Amazon’s systems interact with NVIDIA’s GPU-acceleration
software—including CUDA, TensorRT, and PyTorch with CUDA. In fact, the Court already
determined that these same requests are relevant in the context of a discovery dispute with Dell,
another NVIDIA customer. See Exhibit F at 22:4-20 (“As I see these requests for production, I do
believe that they are targeted to relevant information. . . . I believe the documents that identify and
include that information, at least to an extent, are relevant to the underlying lawsuit. And that same
thought permeates through all of these.”).
These materials are also uniquely in Amazon’s possession. NVIDIA has already confirmed
that it does not possess information about how its customers use its products. See Portuguese Decl.,
Exhibit H at 22:2-11. Internal integration materials, architecture documents, implementation
artifacts, internal communications, and revenue and usage data showing real-world deployment of
the accused technology exist only in Amazon’s files. Neural AI cannot obtain equivalent
information from any other source.
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The requests are proportional to the needs of the case. Neural AI has narrowed from a
broader initial set to nine priority requests. Neural AI further narrowed the focus to three
combinations of NVIDIA products: use of an NVIDIA GPU in combination with (1) an original,
custom, or modified version of PyTorch using CUDA; (2) TensorRT; and (3) applications that
utilize PyTorch with CUDA or TensorRT. See Exhibit E at 5. Meanwhile, the temporal scope
(September 13, 2018 to present) tracks the relevant damages period, and the requests are limited
to U.S.-based or -directed activity. Given the importance of the issues at stake and the amount in
controversy in the underlying patent infringement action, the narrowed requests are proportional.
2. Amazon’s burden objections are unsupported.
To start, Amazon’s written objections to burden are inadequate because they do not “state
with specificity” the burden Amazon would face in producing responsive documents. 611
Carpenter LLC, 2024 WL 1977160, at *1. The boilerplate objections, absent evidence of burden,
do not show that the burden of complying with the subpoena is undue and cannot outweigh the
relevance of the discovery sought.
Further, NAI has taken reasonable steps to minimize Amazon’s burden. NAI spent months
pursuing information directly from NVIDIA to avoid the need to obtain the same from Amazon.
For example, NAI withdrew the initial RFP 1 (“Documents sufficient to identify all types of
NVIDIA GPU-Acceleration Hardware purchased, acquired, or deployed by You.”) because it
obtained data regarding Amazon’s purchases from NVIDIA itself. Further, even for requests for
documents only within Amazon’s possession, NAI prioritized its requests and agreed to narrow
the subpoena to only 9 RFPs, most of which are requests only for documents “sufficient to show”
the requested information. At the same time, NAI provided Amazon with information that NAI
thought would facilitate the investigation, including (1) a detailed explanation of the specific
software and hardware combinations that NAI alleges infringes and (2) a list of the accused
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products Amazon purchased from NVIDIA during the relevant period so that Amazon could search
for information about those specific products. NAI also regularly offered on meet and confers that
it was willing to discuss and work through any burden-related issues Amazon encountered in its
investigation, but to this day, Amazon has never articulated a specific hardship in responding to
the subpoena, as opposed to general allegations that the subpoena requests are too broad.
3. Amazon cannot continue to defer production with vague promises.
As described above, NAI has been patient and cooperative with Amazon. But the fact
discovery deadline in the underlying case is now less than two months away. Amazon’s vague
promise to look into the matter and search for undefined documents—made for the first time on
June 4, 2026—is insufficient. NAI had no choice but to seek the Court’s intervention. Given the
upcoming discovery deadline, NAI suggests that the Court require Amazon to begin producing
documents within 7 days of the Court’s order on this motion and to complete production by no
later than Friday, July 24, 2026.
For the foregoing reasons, NAI respectfully requests that this Court (1) overrule Amazon’s
place-of-compliance objections and hold that this Court has jurisdiction to rule on this motion to
compel; (2) compel Amazon to produce non-privileged documents responsive to Neural AI’s nine
priority subpoena requests—RFPs 5, 7-10, 12-14, and 19; (3) require Amazon to begin rolling
production within 7 days of the Court’s order on this motion and to complete production by Friday,
July 24, 2026; and (4) require Amazon to serve a privilege log compliant with Fed. R. Civ. P.
45(e)(2) and 26(b)(5) for any responsive materials withheld on privilege or work-product grounds,
concurrent with its final production.
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Dated: June 24, 2026
Respectfully submitted,
/s/ Mark Siegmund
Mark D. Siegmund
Texas State Bar No. 24117055
CHERRY JOHNSON SIEGMUND
JAMES PC
Bridgeview Center
7901 Fish Pond Road, 2nd Floor
Waco, Texas 76710
msiegmund@cjsjlaw.com
Max L. Tribble
Texas State Bar 20213950
Brian D. Melton
Texas State Bar 24010620
Rocco Magni
Texas State Bar 24092745
Samuel Drezdzon
Texas State Bar 24117374
SUSMAN GODFREY L.L.P.
1000 Louisiana
Suite 5100
Houston, TX 77002
Telephone: (713) 651-9366
Facsimile: (713) 654-6666
mtribble@susmangodfrey.com
bmelton@susmangodfrey.com
rmagni@susmangodfrey.com
sdrezdzon@susmangodfrey.com
Tamar Lusztig
NY State Bar 5125174
Emily Portuguese
NY State Bar 5920327
One Manhattan West, 50th Floor
New York, NY 10001
tlusztig@susmangodfrey.com
eportuguese@susmangodfrey.com
Tanner Laiche
WA State Bar 60450
401 Union Street, Suite 3000
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Seattle, WA 98101
tlaiche@susmangodfrey.com
Max Ciccarelli
Texas State Bar No. 00787242
CICCARELLI LAW FIRM LLC
100 N. 6th Street, Suite 502
Waco, Texas 76701
Max@CiccarelliLawFirm.com
Attorneys for Petitioner Neural AI, LLC
CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
The undersigned does hereby certify that a true and correct copy of the foregoing
document was served on all parties via electronic mail on this 24th day of June 2026.
/s/ Mark D. Siegmund
Mark D. Siegmund
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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
MIDLAND/ODESSA DIVISION
NEURAL AI, LLC,
Petitioner, Case No. 7:26-mc-00241
v. [Underlying Case: USDC
Western District of Texas No. 7:24-cv-
AMAZON.COM, INC., 00221-ADA-DTG]
Respondent.
MEMORANDUM IN RESPONSE TO PETITIONER’S MOTION TO COMPEL
COMPLIANCE WITH SUBPOENA SERVED ON THIRD-PARTY AMAZON.COM, INC.
I. INTRODUCTION
Neural AI, LLC’s (“NAI”) Motion should be denied for two reasons. First, the subpoena
is invalid on its face because it demands a place of compliance that is not within 100 miles of
Amazon’s headquarters or relevant document custodians; i.e., not where any responsive
documents will be found. Second, no disputes are ripe for decision. In response to non-party
Amazon’s objections to NAI’s overbroad subpoena, the parties conferred and discussed Amazon
producing one thing and only one thing: a spreadsheet containing a report of the volume of accused
NVIDIA GPUs configured in one of three allegedly relevant ways. During the June 17 hearing,
Amazon confirmed it had agreed to complete its production of this information by June 26.
However, two days prior to June 26, NAI filed its Motion. Amazon produced the volume
information on June 26, mooting NAI’s motion as it relates to the volume information.
Prior to filing the Motion, NAI did not confer with Amazon regarding any other issues.
NAI’s failure to meet and confer on these issues violates Local Civil Rule CV-7(g) (meet and
confer requirement) and Fed. R. Civ. P. 45(d)(1) (NAI must “take reasonable steps to avoid
imposing undue burden or expense on” Amazon). In the June 17 hearing, the Court ordered NAI
to confer with Dell to more precisely define various disputes on similar requests). NAI has no
excuse for not conferring here. The Court should deny NAI’s motion.
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II. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
On October 15, 2025, NAI served its subpoena setting the place of compliance as Austin,
Texas. Dkt. 1-3, at 2. 1 NAI’s subpoena contained 20 requests amounting to discovery akin to that
which would be served on a party in patent litigation. Dkt. 1-3. On November 13, 2025, Amazon
objected that NAI’s requests were facially overly broad, unduly burdensome, and sought irrelevant
information. Importantly, Amazon stated that it needed more information before it could even
conduct a search. See generally Dkt. 1-6. Amazon further objected “to the subpoena as improper
because the demanded place of production is not within 100 miles of Seattle, Washington, where
Amazon resides and regularly transacts business in person.” Id. at 4.
On November 19, 2025, the parties conferred, and Amazon “explained that we needed
more information to conduct a search[,]” including at a minimum the identification of relevant
products and the information NAI sought about those products that was unavailable from NVIDIA.
Dkt. 1-7, at 9. NAI did not dispute that Amazon needed this information, and explained that NAI
was “still pursuing discovery from defendant and [was] working to better identify the products
[NVIDIA] supplied . . . that were relevant, as well as what [NAI] needed from [Amazon] about
those products that [NAI] couldn’t get from defendant.” Id. After months of silence, on April 3,
2026, NAI asked Amazon for an update, including whether “Amazon . . . will search for and
produce documents responsive to each of the subpoena requests.” Id. at 10. Amazon reminded
NAI that Amazon was awaiting the information NAI agreed to provide last November. Id. at 9.
Namely, Amazon stated that “[w]hen we last spoke five months ago, we explained that we needed
more information to conduct a search” and NAI “agreed to circle back with [Amazon] once you
had that information.” Id.
On April 13, 2026, the parties again conferred, and Amazon again reminded NAI’s counsel
what NAI had agreed to provide back in November 2025. Dkt. 1-7, at 6. On April 27, 2026, for
the first time, NAI provided Amazon with the listing of relevant products, and the configuration
1
NAI is plaintiff in the underlying patent dispute with defendant NVIDIA.
2
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that NAI contended was relevant in its litigation with NVIDIA 2. Id. As a result, NAI spent five
and half months—from when NAI served its subpoena on October 13, 2025, to April 27, 2026—
to provide Amazon the information needed to conduct a search. Once Amazon had the information
needed to start a search, it did so.
On May 21, 2026, Amazon shared its findings from Amazon’s preliminary investigation:
the accused computer chips were potentially used in many places across the company, and tracking
down each one, how it was used, and how it was configured was not realistically possible. Byer
Declaration of Benjamin J. Byer (“Byer Decl.”) ¶ 3. Namely, asking a cloud provider to track
down this information for many thousands of GPUs is akin to asking an automative company to
track down every bolt and produce documents showing how each was used. Id. Amazon asked
NAI whether NAI could narrow or focus the requests in any way. NAI refused and stated NAI
would simply go to the court rather than meaningfully confer. Id. Amazon nonetheless agreed to
look for ways to provide information about the volume of the accused products that were used in
one of the three identified configurations. Id. NAI requested that Amazon provide a date certain
for this production, but NAI did not request any other information. Id. Amazon explained that
since NAI had only just provided the information needed to begin the search, Amazon could not
yet commit to when it would be completed.
On June 1, 2026, rather than engage in any discussion, NAI simply sent Amazon a
discovery dispute chart and demanded Amazon either respond to the chart or “confirm in writing
by June 8 what categories of documents [Amazon] will agree to search for and produce. . . along
with the timeline for completing that production.” Dkt. 1-7, at 3. On June 4, 2026, Amazon
responded that Amazon would agree to compete the reasonable search the parties had discussed
and provide the results “three weeks from tomorrow” (i.e., June 26, 2026). In a final effort to look
for a cooperative resolution, Amazon again requested a meet and confer. Id. at 2.
2
NAI also dropped certain requests to which Amazon had objected. Id. Dropping improper
requests, however, did not meaningfully narrow the subpoena.
3
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On June 5, 2026, the parties conferred, and Amazon explained that based on a reasonable
search Amazon did not have documents that provided company-wide visibility into the usage NAI
sought, but offered as an alternative to conduct a search and compile into a spreadsheet data
showing for each accused NVIDIA GPUs the volume configured in one of the three ways NAI
identified as relevant. Byer Decl. ¶ 4. When Amazon asked NAI’s counsel whether NAI felt
Amazon should be doing anything more, “NAI was unable to identify anything it believed
[Amazon] should be doing that it hadn’t already agreed to do.” Byer Decl., Ex. A, at 1. Although
Amazon was “conducting the search [the parties] discussed—tracking down where, how, and in
what volume the accused GPUs are used[,]” NAI refused to withdraw its discovery dispute chart.
Byer Decl, Ex. A, at 2.
On June 17, 2026, the Court held a hearing for the discovery disputes NAI had with Dell,
Microsoft, and Amazon, all of whom NAI had served with similar subpoenas. Dkt. 1-8. When
addressing NAI’s dispute with Dell, the Court stated that although some requests to Dell appeared
to cover some relevant information, “the scope of . . . many of them is probably more broad than
necessary” and that the requested discovery “could easily become disproportionate to the benefits
that would be obtained from the information.” Byer Decl., Ex. B (June 17, 2026 Tr. of Disc. H’rg
(“Transcript”) at 22:6-7; 23:3-5). It therefore ordered Dell and NAI to meet and confer on each
request to more precisely define their dispute. Byer Decl., Ex. B (Transcript at 24:4-6).
At the hearing, Amazon’s counsel explained it had agreed to produce by June 26 as the
parties had discussed and confirmed Amazon’s commitment to work with NAI if NAI felt
something was missing. Byer Decl., Ex. B (Transcript at 34:10-35:22). The Court also agreed with
Amazon that the discovery dispute statement was the improper mechanism to hear the dispute
given Amazon’s objection to it.
On Wednesday, June 24, 2026—two days before Amazon’s agreed production—NAI filed
this Motion. On June 26, 2026, Amazon made its agreed production. Byer Decl. ¶ 5. NAI has
neither requested a meet and confer nor contacted Amazon stating that it believes something is
missing from Amazon’s production. Byer Decl. ¶ 6.
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III. ARGUMENT
NAI’s Motion should be denied for two reasons. First, the underlying subpoena fails to
identify a place of compliance that satisfies Rule 45’s restriction. Second, NAI fails to present a
ripe dispute for this Court.
A. NAI Has Moved to Compel in The Wrong District.
Rule 45 permits a requesting party to set the place of compliance “within 100 miles of
where the person resides, is employed, or regularly transacts business in person.” Fed. R. Civ. P.
45(c)(2)(A). NAI does not argue Amazon.com, Inc. (the entity it subpoenaed) is a resident of Texas
or that it is somehow employed there. NAI instead claims Amazon.com, Inc. “regularly transacts
business” within 100 miles of Austin because Amazon generally has a corporate office and
unrelated job postings in Austin. Rule 45 does not permit a requesting party to paint with such
broad brush, forcing a non-party to produce documents at a location having no connection to the
documents requested.
Under Rule 45, the relevant business activities are those tethered to the location “‘[1] where
the corporation is headquartered or [2] the custodian of records resides, is employed, or regularly
transacts business in person.’” Cleary v. Kaleida Health, 2024 WL 1297708, at *3 (W.D.N.Y.
2024) (quoting 9 Moore’s Federal Practice § 45.25[2] (Matthew Bender 3d ed.)); Europlay Cap.
Advisors, LLC v. Does, 323 F.R.D. 628, 629 (C.D. Cal. 2018) (requiring that the subpoena have a
place of compliance at the location where “custodians of records reside, are employed, and
regularly transact business in person.”). In other words, the question is not where an entity is
somehow employed or regularly transacted business in person, but where the custodians of records
are employed or regularly transacts business in person. Europlay, 323 F.R.D. at 629 (emphasis
added) (analyzing whether the non-party’s “custodians of records reside, are employed, and
regularly transact business in person”). This follows from a plain reading of Rule 45, as it makes
no sense to consider an entity’s employment or where it conducts business “in person.”
As a result, courts have squarely rejected the argument that the existence of an office within
a district makes that district a proper Rule 45 place of compliance. Dellaportas v. Shahin, 2025
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WL 3019810, at *1–2 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 29, 2025), adhered to on reconsideration, 2025 WL 3456400
(S.D.N.Y. Dec. 2, 2025) (finding that a motion to compel should be heard in the district where the
“employees who would be responsible for searching and producing information responsive to
Plaintiff’s subpoena are.”). NAI also suggests that a place of compliance is where a party has job
postings. Mot. at 6 (citing Dkt. 1-5). This argument misses the point. NAI cites no evidence that
any of those job postings are for Amazon.com, Inc. (the entity subpoenaed), much less evidence
suggesting Amazon.com, Inc.’s custodians of relevant information are located in Texas. NAI has
therefore failed to carry its burden to show it has satisfied Rule 45 or that its subpoena is
enforceable in this District. See Cruz v. AerSale, Inc., 2025 WL 1426884, at *4–6 (D.N.M. 2025)
(denying motion to compel where the movant failed to establish the proper court of compliance).
B. NAI Fails to Present a Ripe Dispute.
NAI’s discovery requests fall generally into two relevant buckets: (1) requests for
information on the volume of accused NVIDIA GPUs configured in the relevant way (the “volume
information”), and (2) requests for additional technical documents, internal emails, internal
documents, and Amazon financial information. NAI’s motion should be denied on both fronts.
Amazon has already produced the volume information the parties discussed during the meet and
confers. On the remaining requests, NAI has not conferred with Amazon on these requests, fails
to satisfy its burden to show relevance, and fails to refute Amazon’s objections.
1. Amazon Has Already Produced the Volume Material the Parties
Discussed.
On June 5, 2026, Amazon explained that based on a reasonable search Amazon did not
have responsive documents kept in the ordinary course of business that provided company wide
data on the configurations NAI for which sought discovery. Byer Decl. ¶ 4. Nevertheless, Amazon
agreed to go beyond its obligation under Rule 45 and search for and compile data to create a
document that would identify the accused NVIDIA GPUs configured in the accused manner, and
their volumes. Byer Decl., ¶ 4. During the parties’ numerous conferrals, NAI never requested
Amazon do anything else. See Byer Decl., Ex. A, at 2. On June 26, 2026, Amazon produced that
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information. Byer Decl. ¶ 5. To the extent NAI believed additional information was called for,
Amazon also offered to meet and confer with NAI to understand what, if anything, NAI contended
was needed from Amazon to address NAI’s technical requests (e.g., RFPs 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 19).
To date, NAI has not identified any deficiency in Amazon’s production of volume information or
requested a meet and confer. Thus, Amazon has already gone beyond its duties under Rule 45 to
create documents that it does not maintain in the ordinary course of business, and there is no
pending dispute about the sufficiency of Amazon’s production on the volume of accused NVIDIA
GPU configured in one of the three allegedly relevant ways—the only issue on which the parties
have conferred.
2. NAI fails to Present Any Ripe Dispute on the Remaining Requests.
NAI’s Motion also appears to request Amazon be compelled to provide additional, non-
technical information. Although its Motion does not discuss such materials, RFP 12 requests
“communications between [Amazon] and NVIDIA” relating to the accused NVIDIA products,
RFP 13 requests Amazon’s “internal documents” regarding the Accused Products, and RFP 14
seeks “revenue, usage, or subscription data” for Amazon services or software platforms related to
the Accused Products. Dkt. 1-3, at 18–20. Amazon timely objected to these requests because,
among other things, they sought information not relevant to either party’s claims or defenses.
Dkt. 1-5, at 17–20. To the extent NAI contends its motion covers such materials, 3 that portion of
its Motion would fail for three reasons.
First, the parties have never conferred on Amazon’s objections. The parties conferred over
two periods of time. First, shortly after NAI served its subpoena, the parties discussed the
information Amazon needed to begin searching, and NAI agreed to provide that. More than five
months after serving the subpoena, NAI finally did so by identifying the relevant GPUs and the
three configurations of those GPUs it claimed was relevant. Second, the parties reinitiated their
3
NAI appears to have withdrawn its similar requests against Dell, so it is unclear whether NAI
intends to pursue these request here, particularly since NAI’s Motion makes no attempt to justify
them. Byer Decl., Ex. C.
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conferrals shortly after NAI’s five-month delay. These discussions focused solely on the timing of
Amazon producing a report showing the volume of accused GPUs configured in one of the accused
ways. See supra § II.B. The parties never discussed requests for emails, financial information, non-
technical documents, or any other topic in the nine RFPs NAI’s Motion cites without discussion.
Local Rule CV-7(g) states that the Court “may refuse to hear or may deny a nondispositive
motion unless the movant advises the court within the body of the motion that counsel for the
parties have conferred in a good-faith attempt to resolve the matter by agreement and certifies the
specific reason that no agreement could be made.” Conferring in good faith “means that the parties
must genuinely attempt to resolve the dispute without judicial intervention, and not to treat their
negotiations simply as a formal prerequisite for judicial review.” Perkins v. United States Parcel
Serv. of Am., Inc., 2024 WL 1493808, at *1–2 (W.D. Tex. 2024). Courts deny motions to compel
for failing to meet and confer because they do not precisely present a dispute to the court. Id.; see
also Diaz v. Cuatro T Constr., Inc., 2021 WL 2709681, at *1 (W.D. Tex. 2021). Because the
parties have never conferred on those other document requests, the portion of NAI’s Motion
addressing them should be denied.
Remarkably, NAI ignores this Court’s directive on the very same issue during the June 17,
2026 hearing as it relates to NAI’s subpoena to Dell. Byer Decl., Ex. B (Transcript at 24). Namely,
the Court “order[ed] [Dell and NAI] to meet and confer to address what information—figure out
what information is out there and what can be produced[.]” Id. at 23:7-9. NAI now skips the step
the Court expressly ordered—a conferral “addressed discreetly to each request for production.”
Byer Decl., Ex. B. (Transcript at 24:8-9). It is unclear why NAI believes it can skip the same meet
and confer requirement with Amazon. Indeed, during its meet and confer with Dell, NAI narrowed
the scope of its requests to eliminate information it is still seeking here including emails and
revenue data. Byer Decl, Ex. C, at 9–11. This highlights the policy behind the meet and confer
requirement and the unnecessary burden NAI places on the Court by ignoring it.
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Second, Amazon has specific objections to these requests as covering irrelevant
information. For example, RFP 12 requests a broad set of communications that NAI has not
demonstrated are relevant or proportional to the issues in this case. As Amazon stated in its
objection, requests for email communications are particularly burdensome. Dkt 1-6, at 17–18;
Hedgeye Risk Mgmt., LLC v. Dale, 2023 WL 4353076, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. 2023) (citation omitted)
(“all . . . communications ” that relate to multiple categories of records “is often a red flag for
overbreadth and undue burden.”); Chinitz v. Realogy Holdings Corp., 2020 WL 6265083, at *3
(W.D. Tex. 2020) (similarly denying a motion to compel requests for “all communications” as
“facially overbroad”). Indeed, even in party discovery, “[e]mail discovery is not presumptively
relevant to [patent] litigation,” and “‘overbroad email production requests, carry staggering time
and production costs that have a debilitating effect on litigation.’” Hoist Fitness Sys., Inc. v.
TuffStuff Fitness Int’l, Inc., 2019 WL 121195, at *3 (C.D. Cal. 2019) (quoting Introduction to
Model Order Regarding E-Discovery in Patent Cases, at p. 2 (Fed. Cir. 2011)); see also Standing
Order Governing Proceedings (OGP) 4.4-Patent Cases, at p. 3 (noting that “the Court will not
require general search and production of email or other electronically stored information (ESI)
related to email (such as metadata), absent a showing of good cause”). Amazon likewise objects
that its internal documents and financial records not available in any hypothetical negotiation
between NAI and NVIDIA have no relevance to the underlying lawsuit. SPH Am., LLC v. AT&T
Mobility, L.L.C., 2016 WL 11783677, at *2 (S.D. Cal. 2016) (denying motion to compel because
the party failed to show any relevance as to the Georgia-Pacific factors). Indeed, although NAI
seeks to compel the production of financial information here, NAI dropped its request for financial
data during its conferrals with Dell. Byer Decl., Ex. C, at 10.
Third, NAI admits as the moving party it has the burden to establish “that the materials are
relevant or will lead to the discovery of admissible evidence,” Mot. at 7, but NAI has failed to
carry it. Hobbs v. Petroplex Pipe & Constr., Inc., 2018 WL 3603074, at *2 (W.D. Tex. 2018)
(noting that the moving party has the burden to establish relevance). NAI provides a single
sentence alleging that its requests are “directly relevant to proving how NVIDIA’s accused GPU-
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acceleration technology is deployed and used in real-world systems[,]” and “to proving how the
accused products operate in commercial deployments and how Amazon’s systems interact with
NVIDIA’s GPU-acceleration software—including CUDA, TensorRT, and PyTorch with CUDA.”
Mot. at 7. At most, this justifies its technical requests that Amazon has produced on. NAI is entirely
silent about how internal email, internal documents, of Amazon’s financial information would
have any relevance. 4 NAI also suggests the Court already found all its requests to be relevant.
Mot. at 8. But NAI cherry picks quotes while ignoring the Court’s ultimate finding and order that
the parties confer on the issues. Byer Decl., Ex. B (Transcript at 24). Because the Court did not
rule on relevance, NAI cannot skirt its burden to show that relevance “discreetly to each request
for production.” Id.; El Paso Disposal, LP v. Ecube Labs Co., 2025 WL 1879607, at *3–6 (W.D.
Tex. 2025) (denying a motion to compel because moving party made “conclusory arguments about
relevance” without sufficient explanation or consideration for the burden on the non-party).
IV. CONCLUSION
For the reasons stated above, the Court should deny NAI’s Motion.
DATED this 1st day of July, 2026.
/s/ Darryl J. Adams
Darryl J. Adams (Texas Bar No. 00796101)
Slayden Grubert Beard PLLC
401 Congress Ave., Ste. 1650
Austin, TX 78701
Tel: 512.402.3562
Email: dadams@sgbfirm.com
Attorney for Respondent Amazon.com, Inc.
4
Rule 45 “provides additional protections where a subpoena seeks trade secret or confidential
commercial information from a nonparty,” requiring a higher showing of “substantial need.”
Vinton Steel, LLC. v. Com. Metals Co., 2023 WL 2518881, at *3 (W.D. Tex. 2023) (citation and
internal quotation marks omitted). Amazon objected because NAI’s requests asked for Amazon’s
confidential documents and trade secrets, Dkt. 1-6, at 5, 18–21, but NAI does not address its
“substantial need” for the information.
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