CHIP PACKAGING TECHNOLOGIES, LLC v. STMicroelectronics, Inc. — Entry #57: Miscellaneous Objection to [50] Order STMicroelectronics, Inc.'s Rule 72(a) Objections to the August 17, 2026 Order regarding Discovery Dispute Over Product…

Case 7:25-cv-00505-DC-DTG            Document 57        Filed 08/31/26      Page 1 of 12


                        IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
                         FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS
                              MIDLAND/ODESSA DIVISION

 CHIP PACKAGING TECHNOLOGIES, LLC,

                 Plaintiff,                             Civil Action No. 7:25-cv-00505-DC-
                                                        DTG
         v.
                                                        JURY TRIAL DEMANDED
 STMICROELECTRONICS, INC.,

                 Defendant.


                    STMICROELECTRONICS, INC.’S RULE 72(A)
              OBJECTIONS TO THE AUGUST 17, 2026 ORDER REGARDING
               DISCOVERY DISPUTE OVER PRODUCT IDENTIFICATION

       Defendant STMicroelectronics, Inc. (“ST”) respectfully objects under Federal Rule of

Civil Procedure 72(a) to the portion of Magistrate Judge Gilliland’s August 17, 2026 Order

Regarding July 16, 2026 Discovery Dispute Over Product Identification (Dkt. 50) denying ST’s

request to strike the products in Chip Packaging Technologies, LLC’s (“CPT”) accused-product

list that are not specifically charted in Appendices A–E to CPT’s preliminary infringement

contentions. Each argument advanced in these objections, together with the supporting evidence,

was raised or fairly encompassed by, and is consistent with, ST’s position in the parties’ joint

discovery-dispute chart and accompanying Exhibit A, which were before Magistrate Judge

Gilliland. Dkt. 50 at 2–4; Ex. A (Exhibit A to the parties’ joint discovery-dispute chart, containing

the correspondence and CPT’s Second Supplemental Preliminary Infringement Contentions

submitted with and cited in that chart, and cited herein as “Ex. A”).

I.     INTRODUCTION

       The challenged ruling permits CPT to continue accusing hundreds of products that it did

not chart and for which its supplemental statements supply no representativeness analysis. The

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governing requirement is straightforward. The Court’s Standing Order Governing Patent

Proceedings (“OGP”) requires a plaintiff’s preliminary infringement contentions “in the form of a

chart setting forth where in the accused product(s) each element of the asserted claim(s) are

found.” OGP at Appendix A (W.D. Tex. Aug. 2, 2022). Courts in this District allow plaintiffs to

pursue a representativeness theory for uncharted products only when they are “reasonably similar”

to those specifically charted. See, e.g., IGT v. Zynga Inc., No. 6:21-CV-00331-ADA, 2022 WL

606719, at *2 (W.D. Tex. Mar. 1, 2022). CPT did not meet that threshold, and the Court’s order

denying ST’s motion to strike was thus clearly erroneous and contrary to this District’s precedent.

       CPT’s June 16, 2026 statements declare that a single charted product is “representative”

and then allege that hundreds of other products contain structures required by the claims, with no

analysis or factual basis as to how the charted products are representative. Worse, CPT

simultaneously told ST that the public materials used to assemble its list say nothing about the

internal structures supplying the asserted claims’ limitations. See Ex. A at 4–5 (“Where ST’s

documents do address packaging, they describe only exterior features (e.g., pinouts and exterior

package outline drawings) and do not show the internal package structures at all or otherwise

describe their construction.”). On this record, CPT lacked a reasonable factual basis to infer that

the uncharted products shared the same relevant structures as the charted representative products,

much less infringed. The Order does not explain why CPT’s bare accusation of hundreds of

products with no charts and no factual support or representativeness analysis satisfies this Court’s

rules. ST requests that the Court set aside the product-list ruling and strike the uncharted products

without prejudice to CPT seeking leave to add a specific product if it can articulate a good-faith

factual basis for alleging infringement in a requisite claim chart. At a minimum, the Court should

vacate and remand for a reasoned determination under the correct standard with reviewable


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findings.

II.     BACKGROUND

        A.     CPT Charted Five Products Through Product-Specific Teardowns

        On February 12, 2026, CPT served preliminary infringement contentions charting five

exemplary products: STL220N6F7 for the ’299 Patent; SPC582B60E1 for the ’646 Patent;

STM32G071CB for the ’189 Patent; SR5E1E7 for the ’351 Patent; and LPS28DFW for the ’658

Patent. The charts relied on physical teardowns, including annotated reverse-engineering

photographs, X-ray images, and cross-sectional views. See Dkt. 50 at 2; Ex. A at 4, 11, 13. CPT

also vaguely referred to additional products, but did not specifically identify them.

        B.     CPT Expanded the List Without Product-Specific Analysis

        At ST’s request for “a complete list of specifically identified ST products (by product

name),” CPT served supplemental contentions on March 27, 2026. The list added approximately

320 products but, as the dispute chart records, supplied no infringement explanation for those

additions. CPT said it built the list from ST’s public product-family pages and parametric tables,

datasheets, application notes, product briefs, distributor catalogs, and alleged part-numbering

conventions, attempting to include all variants within a family. See Dkt. 50 at 2; Ex. A at 1–2, 11.

Those sources and methodology supplied names and external classifications, not a technical

comparison showing that each listed product or group shared the same claimed internal structures

as the five charted representative products.

        C.     CPT’s Own Correspondence Described the Limits of Its Public Sources

        In its May 27, 2026 letter, CPT admitted that ST’s publicly available datasheets describe

only exterior features—such as pinouts and package-outline drawings—and “do not show the

internal package structures at all or otherwise describe their construction.” Ex. A at 4–5. In its June

16 letter, CPT likewise stated that a package’s pin count “says nothing about whether it shares the

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claimed internal construction” and that ST had identified no internal difference. Id. at 11–12.

       D.      CPT Removed and Corrected Entries

       ST’s position in the dispute chart reported that its review identified more than 50 listed part

numbers that did not even exist and more than 20 listed products that were unaccused, while the

products that did exist spanned multiple package types, pin counts, and configurations. Dkt. 50 at

2–3. CPT’s June 16 supplement removed more than 70 products and corrected package

designations; it explained that certain entries used the suffix for a corresponding ball-grid-array

variant even though CPT meant the lead-frame product. Dkt. 50 at 3; Ex. A at 11–12, 18, 21, 23–

24. CPT also acknowledged that compiling a list from public materials alone might make it over-

inclusive at the margins. Ex. A at 2. These are not abstract differences in nomenclature. They show

that extrapolating from part-number conventions and external package information did not reliably

establish whether a product existed, which package it had, or whether it contained the claimed

structures necessary to establish infringement. CPT simply failed to meet its burden of establishing

why the uncharted products could possibly infringe the asserted patents.

       E.      CPT’s June 16 Supplement Added Labels, Not Analysis

       CPT’s June 16 supplement added one representativeness sentence per patent allegedly

covering all uncharted products, asserting on information and belief that those products contained

certain recited structures in the claim. The contentions contained no theory of representativeness

nor explained how the products are allegedly reasonably similar to the five charted products.

       F.      The Parties Presented the Dispute to Magistrate Judge Gilliland

       On July 16, the parties submitted a joint discovery-dispute chart addressing whether CPT

could continue accusing products not specifically charted in Appendices A–E. ST requested that

those products be stricken without prejudice to CPT seeking leave to add a specific product

identified through discovery for which CPT could articulate a good-faith basis for alleging

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infringement. CPT opposed, relying on its position that uncharted products need only be

“reasonably similar” to the charted products. Dkt. 50 at 2–4. On August 17, Judge Gilliland found

a hearing unnecessary and denied ST’s request to strike. Dkt. 50 at 1. The Order does not state the

standard, explain how CPT satisfies that standard, or make factual findings. See id.

III.     STANDARD OF REVIEW

         Under Rule 72(a), the district judge must consider timely objections and modify or set aside

any part of a magistrate judge’s nondispositive order that is clearly erroneous or contrary to law.

Fed. R. Civ. P. 72(a); 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(A). A factual finding is clearly erroneous when, after

reviewing the record, the reviewing court is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake

has been committed. See Sparling v. Doyle, No. EP-13-CV-00323-DCG, 2016 WL 236266, at *2

(W.D. Tex. Jan. 20, 2016). Legal conclusions are reviewed de novo under the “less stringent

‘contrary to law’” standard, which is met when an order fails to apply or misapplies relevant

statutes, case law, or rules of procedure. See Daedalus Blue, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., No. 6:20-

CV-01152-ADA, 2022 WL 3031076, at *2 (W.D. Tex. Aug. 1, 2022); Arroyo v. Oprona, Inc., No.

CV H-16-852, 2017 WL 1106318, at *1 (S.D. Tex. Mar. 24, 2017).

         This objection presents both forms of Rule 72(a) error. The product-list ruling rests on an

erroneous legal premise—that CPT could continue accusing uncharted products without first

showing reasonable similarity in claim-relevant respects—and on a conclusion unsupported by the

record that CPT made that showing. ST does not contend that the absence of a hearing, standing

alone, requires relief. The problem is that the Order gives no way to determine what standard

governed, how it was applied, or what facts supported the result.

IV.      ARGUMENT

         A.     CPT Bore the Threshold Burden to Show Reasonable Similarity in Claim-
                Relevant Respects


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       The governing substantive requirement is straightforward. Judge Counts’s OGP requires

the plaintiff to serve preliminary infringement contentions “in the form of a chart setting forth

where in the accused product(s) each element of the asserted claim(s) are found.” OGP at Appendix

A. At the preliminary stage, IGT permits representative-product charting only when the additional

products are “reasonably similar” to the specifically charted products. IGT, 2022 WL 606719, at

*2. That standard is modest, but it is a threshold burden on the patentee: CPT had to present enough

facts to permit a reasonable inference that the uncharted products shared the same structural

features required by its infringement theories.

       Zebra confirms that representativeness requires analysis rather than a label. There, the

court ordered the plaintiff to provide either an infringement chart for specified products and “an

analysis explaining why” its charts were representative of all accused products, or a chart for a

representative product from each group of similar products. Intellectual Tech LLC v. Zebra Techs.

Corp., No. 6:19-CV-00628-ADA, Dkt. 31 at 1 (W.D. Tex. Apr. 29, 2020). WSOU applied the same

principle: lists of products were not specific enough, and the plaintiff had to provide either

individual charts or detailed descriptions of how each product was represented by the single

charted product. WSOU Invs. LLC v. OnePlus Tech. (Shenzhen) Co., No. 6:20-CV-00952-ADA,

2022 WL 174517, at *2–3 (W.D. Tex. Jan. 18, 2022). Although WSOU denied a motion to strike

without prejudice on timing and diligence grounds, it expressly stated that the denial did not accept

the existing contentions and required greater detail. Id. at *3.

       B.      CPT’s Supplemental Statements Are Conclusory Representativeness
               Assertions, Not Analysis

       Not only did CPT fail to meet its threshold burden, its admissions show that it had no basis

to have made a representativeness allegation in the first place. Instead, CPT added merely

conclusory accusations of representativeness. For example, the supplement does not compare the


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charted product to any uncharted product or defined group. The supplement does not explain why

a product family, technology generation, package type, or part-number pattern establishes the

presence of the claimed internal structure required by the asserted patents. Nor does it identify a

technical document, teardown, or other source showing that the feature is present in any uncharted

product. See Dkt. 50 at 2–3; Ex. A at 1–2, 4–5, 11–12, 16, 18. Zebra required “an analysis

explaining why” the chart was representative, and WSOU required detailed descriptions for each

product or group. CPT supplied neither.

       CPT’s reliance on a bare “representativeness” sentence also conflicts with SVV. There, the

court refused to create a standard in which representative products could “be used as remedy for

incomplete PICs,” while allowing the request to be renewed after the start of fact discovery if

representative products would fairly streamline the case. See SVV Tech. Innovations, Inc. v.

Samsung Elecs. Co., No. 6:20-cv-00139-ADA, Dkt. 35 at 2–3 (W.D. Tex. Aug. 9, 2020).

Representative-product charting may streamline an adequate preliminary disclosure; it cannot

replace the disclosure’s necessary factual basis.

       That distinction matters here. CPT did not present smaller representative buckets, identify

the common internal feature that defines each bucket, or explain why known differences in

package type and pin count did not matter to its particular claim theories. It simply extended five

teardown-based charts to a much larger list. The supplement therefore left ST and the Court

without the notice the preliminary-contention requirement is designed to provide.

       C.      CPT’s Own Record Shows It Lacked a Basis to Infer Similarity or
               Infringement

       More fundamentally, CPT’s own correspondence negates the factual premise of any

potential representativeness theory, making any amendment to add such analysis futile. CPT told

ST that the public packaging materials it reviewed to identify the products describe only exterior


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features and “do not show the internal package structures at all or otherwise describe their

construction.” Ex. A at 4–5. CPT further stated that “[t]hat a package has 48 pins rather than 176

says nothing about whether it shares the claimed internal construction.” Id. at 11–12. These

statements affirmatively establish that the information CPT relied on to compile its accused

products list reveals no basis to assert a theory of representativeness, much less infringement.

       Indeed, rather than defend its contentions as presenting any legitimate theory of

representativeness, CPT’s responsive dispute chart submission merely alleges that actually

examining each product to develop a basis of infringement would have been too hard. See Dkt. 50

at 2 (CPT responding that “ST would have CPT buy and tear down hundreds of parts to answer a

question ST can answer from its own files,” and that “ST demands the impossible”). CPT cannot

escape this Court’s rules for having a basis for asserting infringement based on burden. If CPT

cannot afford to conduct an infringement analysis of each product, the answer is not to accuse the

product of infringement anyway and then engage in a fishing expedition based on guesswork. CPT

cannot use the absence of internal information to justify accusing products and then use that same

absence to demand discovery to find out whether the accusations were warranted.

       D.      The List’s Nonexistent and Unaccused Entries Confirm the Unreliability of
               CPT’s Extrapolation

       The subsequent corrections confirm that CPT’s methodology was not a reliable means of

identifying accused products. The dispute chart reports that more than 50 predicted part numbers

did not exist, that more than 20 listed products were unaccused, and that the list swept together

multiple package types, pin counts, and configurations.1 Dkt. 50 at 2–3. CPT then removed more

than 70 entries and corrected package designations, including entries that had used a ball-grid-


1
  “Despite the plausible inference, CPT denies that it used AI to construct the list. Pressed on
how it could rely on ‘representativeness’ for hundreds of different products, CPT promised a
remedy while conceding the list included non-existent and unaccused products.” Dkt. 50 at 3.
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array suffix for a lead-frame product. Ex. A at 11–12, 18, 21, 23–24. Those corrections show that

product names, numbering conventions, and external package information did not reliably identify

the products or their packages—much less their internal construction.

       E.      The Order Improperly Shifted CPT’s Threshold Burden to ST and Allowed
               Discovery to Create the Missing Basis

       The ruling reverses the required sequence. CPT cannot simply accuse swathes of products

with no chart and no representativeness theory and thereby shift the burden to ST to show the

charted products are not representative. Instead, the ruling permits discovery to continue with

respect to hundreds of products without requiring CPT to show those products relate in any way

to its infringement theories. Dkt. 50 at 2–3; Ex. A at 4–5, 11–12. That shifts CPT’s burden to ST

and turns discovery into a mechanism for fabricating, rather than proving, a preliminary

infringement theory.

       IGT does not support that inversion. There, the court found that IGT met the reasonably-

similar standard—but “only barely”—because all the uncharted games were run by Zynga, were

alleged to work in the same way, and the accused communication with servers remained unrebutted

by Zynga’s arguments or evidence. IGT, 2022 WL 606719, at *2. Only after finding that threshold

showing did the court discount Zynga’s position for lack of a declaration or technical document

showing that certain games never communicated with a server. Id. IGT therefore considered the

defendant’s lack of rebuttal evidence after the plaintiff had supplied a basis for similarity; it did

not hold that a defendant must disprove similarity before the plaintiff provides any analysis. Here,

CPT’s record supplies no comparable technical or product-specific basis and affirmatively states

that its public sources did not reveal the relevant internal structures.

       F.      The Order’s Silence Compounds and Confirms the Rule 72(a) Error

       Finally, the Order contains no governing standard, reasoning, application, or reviewable


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findings for the challenged product-list ruling. It states only that a hearing is unnecessary and that

ST’s request to strike is denied. Dkt. 50 at 1. ST does not assert a freestanding requirement that

every discovery ruling contain detailed findings, and it does not contend that the absence of a

hearing alone requires relief. The narrower problem is that, in resolving whether preliminary

contentions support hundreds of uncharted accusations, the Order gives no way to tell whether

Judge Gilliland applied the preliminary-contention requirement, IGT’s reasonably-similar

standard, or any standard at all.

       That omission compounds and confirms the Rule 72(a) error. The record cannot support

the result under the correct standard: CPT’s statements are conclusory, its public sources did not

reveal the internal structures at issue, and its list contained nonexistent and unaccused entries that

it later removed or corrected. Without a stated standard and findings applying it, the Court cannot

distinguish a permissible factual judgment from a legal misallocation of the threshold burden. The

product-list ruling should therefore be set aside; at minimum, it should be vacated and remanded

for a reasoned determination under the correct standard, with reviewable findings addressing

whether CPT showed reasonable similarity in claim-relevant respects.

V.     CONCLUSION

       ST respectfully requests that the Court set aside the August 17, 2026 Order to the extent it

denies ST’s request to strike products not specifically charted in Appendices A–E to CPT’s

preliminary infringement contentions; and strike those uncharted products without prejudice to

CPT seeking leave to add a specific product when CPT can articulate a good-faith factual basis for

alleging infringement. At minimum, ST requests vacatur and remand to Magistrate Judge Gilliland

for a reasoned determination under the correct governing standard, with reviewable findings

applying that standard to the record presented to him. ST requests such other relief as the Court

deems just and proper.

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Dated: August 31, 2026                   Respectfully submitted,

                                         /s/ Jeffery S. Becker
                                         Jeffery S. Becker
                                         Texas State Bar No. 24069354
                                         Nolan McQueen
                                         Texas State Bar No. 24125322
                                         Spencer Nayar
                                         Texas State Bar No. 24149241
                                         BAKER BOTTS L.L.P.
                                         2001 Ross Ave, Suite 900
                                         Dallas, Texas 75201
                                         Telephone: (214) 953-6500
                                         Facsimile: (214) 953-6503
                                         Email: Jeff.Becker@BakerBotts.com
                                         Email: Nolan.McQueen@BakerBotts.com
                                         Email: Spencer.Nayar@BakerBotts.com
                                         ATTORNEYS FOR DEFENDANT
                                         STMICROELECTRONICS, INC.


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                               CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE

      I hereby certify that all counsel of record are being served with a copy of the foregoing

document via the Court’s CM/ECF system on August 31, 2026.

                                                    /s/ Jeffery S. Becker
                                                    Jeffery S. Becker


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