Federal Circuit denies Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears attorneys’ fees

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has denied singers Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears attorneys’ fees, costs and expenses in a case centring on a patent for a panoramic display system.

On October 20, the Federal Circuit ruled on the case. Judges Kimberly Ann Moore, Richard Linn and Kathleen O’Malley were reviewing an earlier US District Court for the Central District of California ruling.

The case centres on US patent number 6,669,346, which was issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in December 2003. It covers a “panoramic imaging and display system for the imaging and displaying of visual-media content” and relates to large audience display systems.

The patent’s inventor, Darren Metcalf, assigned it to US company Large Audience Display Systems (LADS) in October 2009.

LADS sued Timberlake and Spears at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas for patent infringement in November 2009, but the case was later moved to the Central District of California.

The company claimed that Timberlake infringed the patent during his “Future/SexLoveShow Tour” in the use of a large audience display screen. Spears was similarly named for her use of a display screen during her “Circus Tour”.

Spears and Timberlake allegedly used a “large-scale display system in their concert tours that either drops down from or is fixed to the ceiling”, and which is cylinder-shaped so the audience can see from any direction.

In November 2011, Spears and Timberlake filed an inter partes re-examination request for all the asserted claims of the ‘346 patent.

The singers also filed a motion to stay the district court case pending the outcome of the re-examination.

In 2011, the USPTO granted the request for re-examination and invalidated most of the claims of the patent. A year later, the USPTO rejected all the claims apart from one, but further investigation into the claims was undertaken.

The California district court subsequently granted the motion to stay the case and in April 2015 Spears and Timberlake moved to dismiss the district court action with prejudice.

LADS opposed the order and moved to lift the stay. The district court lifted the stay in June last year and then dismissed the case in light of the USPTO’s final decision to cancel all the claims involved in the district court case.

Timberlake and Spears then filed a motion for recovery of attorneys’ fees and expenses worth around $755,900.

The Central District of California granted Timberlake and Spears all requested fees and costs “based on its ‘review of the submitted attorneys’ fees and costs and supporting evidence’”, according to the Federal Circuit.

The district court had described the ‘lodestar’ method for calculating attorneys’ fees. This method requires courts to calculate fees based on the number of reasonable hours billed and multiply these hours by a reasonable hourly billing rate.

However, the court did not actually use this method, but instead calculated the requested fees according to an economic survey report.

LADS appealed against the decision, and in the latest ruling the Federal Circuit said: “We vacate the district court’s award of fees ... and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”

The Federal Circuit’s decision was made “because the district court abused its discretion in finding this case exceptional on the grounds articulated for the finding, and because the court’s fee calculations were not explained sufficiently”.

Separately, Timberlake has been reportedly “spared a brush with the law” after he uploaded a picture of himself to Twitter voting in the US presidential election in his home town, Memphis, Tennessee.

In 2015, it became illegal in Tennessee for voters to take photos inside polling stations.