ITC Hearing Exhibits: What to Settle Before Hearing Week
Arlington, Virginia · Minutes from the Commission · Nationwide
Pro-Legal Services, Inc. supports Section 337 practices before the Commission, and we have handled ITC matters. ITC hearing exhibits get built in the compressed window between the close of expert discovery and hearing week, usually while the same team is finishing prehearing briefing. The work is unglamorous and entirely unforgiving: a renumbered exhibit, a missing public version, or a board that reads badly from the jury box is not a problem anyone has time to fix. These are the decisions worth making before that window opens.
Lock numbering before the prehearing statement, not before the hearing
The exhibit list goes in with the prehearing statement, which puts the numbering deadline earlier than most teams plan for. Numbering drifts when several people prepare sets in parallel. Agree the convention and the owner at the outset, and generate every physical set, digital set, and cross-reference index from one source rather than maintaining them separately.
Check the ground rules before building anything
Ground rules vary by ALJ and govern exhibit conventions, confidentiality marking, and what gets filed rather than lodged. Build to the ground rules in front of you, not to a generic template. Where OUII participates, the Staff needs its sets too.
Expect late substitutions and build for them
Exhibits get added, dropped, and renumbered in the final days. The question is not whether that happens but whether your vendor’s workflow absorbs it or breaks under it. Ask what a renumber costs in turnaround time, and whether cross-references update automatically or by hand.
Confidential and public sets are two deliverables, not one
Every confidential exhibit set needs its public counterpart with the redactions matching exactly, and the two must never be combined into one file. Confirm who produces both and when, because discovering this is a separate job during hearing week is a bad discovery.
Decide what goes on a board and what stays on a screen
Large-format demonstratives read differently from a monitor, and a graphic designed for a slide usually fails as a board. Scale, contrast, and text size matter more than the design. Settle which exhibits earn physical production and have them proofed at full size before hearing week.
Settle whether a physical model earns its place
For some matters a 3D printed model of the accused product or a patented device does work no board can. It goes back with the panel, and a witness can demonstrate with it from the stand. If your expert has already produced a CAD or simulation file, printing from it is straightforward — and because the expert built it, the expert can testify about it.
Know how fast a rebuild can reach the Commission
Hearings are held at the Commission’s building in Washington. When a set has to be rebuilt overnight, the distance between the production floor and the hearing room becomes the only variable that matters.
How Pro-Legal Handles Hearing Week
We produce tabbed and bookmarked hardcopy and digital exhibit sets, witness and deposition binders, blowbacks, large-format demonstrative boards, and 3D printed physical models from CAD and print files your expert supplies. Numbering, indexing, and cross-referencing come from one source. Paired public and confidential sets are produced as a single workflow. We run 24/7/365 through hearing week with source-to-image verification and documented chain of custody, from a facility in Arlington, Virginia, minutes across the river. We ask which ALJ and read the ground rules before we quote. We have handled ITC matters.
Related reading: our overview of ITC Section 337 litigation support covers the full service range, our article on confidential business information redaction covers public version production, and our piece on 3D printed trial exhibits covers physical models in detail.
We produce hearing exhibits for Commission proceedings in Washington and for trials across Maryland and Virginia, including Alexandria, Fairfax, Tysons, Northern Virginia, Richmond, Bethesda, Rockville, Silver Spring, Baltimore, and Annapolis, and ship exhibit sets and printed models to firms nationwide, including New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, and Wilmington.
Hearing week approaching? Contact Pro-Legal Services, Inc., 1550 Wilson Blvd, Suite 250, Arlington, VA 22209, at info@pro-legal.com or 202-955-9400. Tell us the hearing date and the exhibit count and we will work backwards from it. Available 24/7/365.