ORDER

TERENCE P. KEMP, Magistrate Judge.

This is a trademark infringement case (with associated claims for unfair competition, passing off and counterfeiting). In its amended complaint (Doc. 10), The Ohio State University claims that defendant Teespring, a t-shirt seller, "has online tools that permit its customers to create and upload infringing and counterfeiting designs" and to set goals for how many tshirts they intend to sell. Once that goal is met, according to the complaint, Teespring manufactures the shirts and ships them to the persons who placed orders for the shirts. The complaint contains a number of examples of allegedly infringing products offered for sale on Teespring's website, and alleges that Teespring is liable for, among other things, contributory infringement. In response to the amended complaint, Teespring moved to dismiss or to transfer the case to the District of Rhode Island, where Teespring is headquartered.

Ohio State has not yet responded to the motion to dismiss. Rather, shortly after the motion was filed, it asked for an informal conference to discuss the fact that, in its view, the motion raised factual issues about which discovery was needed. Although one branch of the motion is a Rule 12(b)(6) motion directed to Count III, the contributory infringement claim, and raises no factual issues, the other branch of the motions argues that the t-shirt sellers referred to in the complaint (i.e. Teespring's customers who submit the designs and sales goals) are indispensable parties and that they cannot all be joined in the action because this Court cannot exercise personal jurisdiction over at least some of them due to their lack of minimum contacts with the State of Ohio. They can, however, (at least according to Teespring) all be sued in Rhode Island, so as an alternative to dismissing the case outright, Teespring has asked the Court to order a change of venue under 28 U.S.C. §1404(a). In support of these latter arguments, Teespring submitted, among other exhibits, an affidavit from Christopher Daft, its senior vicepresident, which describes Teespring's business model, the location of its sellers, and the efforts Teespring made to comply with Ohio State's requests to remove infringing designs from its website. The Court agreed that the motion raised factual issues and that it would only be fair to allow Ohio State to conduct discovery directed to these issues before it filed its response, and also before the time that discovery ordinarily commenced (the parties had not, at that time, had their Rule 26(f) meeting — they did not do so until July 14, 2014, see Doc. 14).

In order to allow this particular discovery to proceed, the Court issued a short order (Doc. 13) which reads in full as follows:

Because the factual basis for the motion to dismiss or transfer was relatively limited, the Court believed that it would not be a difficult matter for the parties to identify and conduct a similarly limited amount of discovery and to have the motion briefed in a timely manner. As it turns out, the Court was mistaken.

The parties did have some conversations with Magistrate Judge Mark R. Abel about mediation, but that has been a dead end so far. They asked for another discovery conference with the Court, which was held on September 29, 2014; they agreed to a protective order, which was entered on September 30, 2014; and they requested a further discovery conference which was held on November 6, 2014. The subject of that latter conference was a 31-topic notice of deposition which Ohio State served pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 30(b)(6) and Teespring's agreement to make a corporate representative available to testify in Rhode Island on November 19, 2014. While Teespring was amenable to having the deposition go forward, it objected to having to prepare and produce a witness on all of the topics in the notice. At the Court's request, Teespring filed its objections, and each party has now had the opportunity to address the substantive issues which they raise. Ohio State also provided the Court with copies of correspondence about discovery issues and copies of written discovery served by Ohio State and responded to by Teespring. Those documents demonstrate a substantial disagreement about whether the interrogatories (of which there appear to have been seven propounded) and the 27 associated document requests fell within the scope of discovery described in the Court's earlier order. The parties have asked for prompt guidance as to the proper scope of the November 19 deposition.

The answer to the question posed by the parties depends upon whether the ongoing discovery is limited to the factual basis of the motion to dismiss. The June 30 order does not explicitly ban other discovery pending a resolution of the motion to dismiss; there was no reason for the Court to address that question at that time since the issue before the Court was whether any discovery could go forward prior to the Rule 26(f) conference. The Rule 26(f) report does not directly address this subject either; it sets forth a schedule for taking discovery about the motion to dismiss, but Section 6(e) of the report indicates that while Teespring favored a stay of other discovery pending resolution of that motion, Ohio State did not propose that other discovery be deferred. Nevertheless, the parties did agree in part on a schedule for completing discovery on the motion to dismiss and for Ohio State to file its response (Section 6(f) of the Rule 26(f) report), and it appears to the Court that both the written discovery served and the proposed 30(b)(6) deposition are part of an effort to meet this schedule. Therefore, the Court will answer the question it believes the parties to be asking, which is how many of the 30(b)(6) topics relate to the factual basis for the pending motion to dismiss.

Ohio State devotes a substantial portion of its briefing to the question of whether it has adequately alleged contributory infringement, and what the proper elements of such a claim may be. But that is not, at this point in the case, a factual issue; Teespring's Rule 12(b)(6) motion addresses only the allegations in the amended complaint, and concedes that the Court must accept as true, for purposes of deciding the motion, all of the wellpleaded allegations of the complaint. Although Teespring attached factual materials to its motion, it makes no reference to them in the section of its memorandum which addresses the legal sufficiency of Count III. Consequently, none of the topics which, according to Ohio State, relate to the contributory infringement claim are within the proper scope of the Rule 30(b)(6) deposition. That appears to be the bulk of the topics in the notice.

The only topics which Ohio State identifies as relating not to contributory infringement but to the indispensable party argument are topics 3,4,5,6,7,9,10,11,12,16 and 29. See Doc. 4, at 6-7. Teespring has agreed to provide information about its relationship with the sellers whose products are identified in the amended complaint. Ohio State argues that it needs "broader discovery . . . to test the factual bases of Defendant's claims. . . ." Id. That broader discovery appears to include the names of individuals who submitted designs to Teespring which included any mark for which Ohio State claims protection, anyone who asked Teespring to produce an allegedly infringing product whether Teespring did so or not, anyone who bought a product with an infringing mark, and any communications with sellers or customers which mentions Ohio State or any of its protected marks.

All of this discovery seems to disregard the fact that the complaint identifies specific products that were actually manufactured and sold, and that Teespring's motion focuses on the sellers who were involved in that activity. Teespring does not claim, nor could it plausibly, that the Court cannot afford complete relief to the parties because there are hypothetical sellers, not named in the complaint, who are indispensable parties; it argues that the sellers of the products described in the complaint are identifiable and that not all of them can be sued in Ohio. It makes additional arguments about why it would be more convenient to litigate this matter in Rhode Island. Discovery which goes beyond finding out who these specific sellers are, whether they all have enough minimum contacts with Ohio to be joined, and whether, as Teespring argues, those sellers are bound by indemnification agreements that might subject them to double, multiple, or inconsistent rulings and obligations, is not directed to the factual basis of the pending motion. Since Teespring has not and cannot base its 12(b)(7) motion on any facts relating to sellers other than the ones associated with the products described in the complaint, it follows that the only proper subject for discovery, as it relates to that part of the motion, is information about those sellers and Teespring's relationship with them. Certainly, more general questions about Teespring's business model may be necessary in order to place that information into the proper context, but questions about other sellers and other products are not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of evidence which Ohio State could use in its response to the motion to dismiss.

Ohio State has argued that it would be costly and inefficient for it to have to take this deposition on the issues relating to the motion to dismiss, and then take the same or other 30(b)(6) depositions on the merits. That may be true, but, as the Court has noted, the parties appear to have framed their discovery to date as part of the process of enabling Ohio State to get discovery before it is required to respond to the motion to dismiss, and there does not appear to be a substantial amount of overlap between that discovery and merits discovery on the remaining claims. Further, the latter discovery is clearly the more extensive, and including that discovery in the current deposition would prolong the process and perhaps require a continuance, or at least additional preparation. If the current deposition, as the Court has defined its scope, will be brief, the parties can explore less costly means of conducting it than travel to Rhode Island.

For all of the reasons set forth in this Order, the Court limits the scope of the Rule 30(b)(6) deposition to the factual basis for the pending motion to dismiss, as set forth above.