LovePop, Inc. v. PaperPop Cards Inc. (17-cv-11017).

Judge Gorton denied both parties 2019 motions to disqualify each other 2019s expert witnesses in a contentious litigation involving allegations of doctored evidence. LovePop asserts that PaperPop infringed its copyright in several designs of pop-up greeting cards. PaperPop produced documents and photographs that were alleged to show that PaperPop conceived of the designs first, but LovePop purports that PaperPop tampered with the metadata to falsely back-date the documents to the relevant date. LovePop proffered an expert who would testify as to what metadata was, the means for manipulating metadata, and that some of PaperPop 2019s documents could not have been created on the dates alleged because the software with which they were created had not yet been made available. PaperPop in turn proffered an expert to testify that LovePop 2019s expert used unvalidated testing to achieve his results and to present the results of his testing that show the tests of LovePop 2019s expert were unreliable and incorrect. Judge Gorton determined that both parties 2019 complaints were directed to the credibility of their opponents 2019 experts, who were otherwise both well-qualified. Accordingly, he denied both motions.