Blue Coat granted non-infringement ruling in Finjan patent case
Cyber security company Blue Coat Systems has been granted a judgment of non-infringement in a cyber security patent case.
However, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said yesterday, January 10, that two patents owned by Finjan, which took Blue Coat to court, had been infringed by Blue Coat.
Following the trial, where the plaintiff was awarded approximately $39.5 million in damages, the Federal Circuit agreed that Blue Coat is entitled to a judgment of non-infringement on patent number 6,965,968, because Finjan “failed to introduce substantial evidence that the accused products implement the claimed policy index”.
The patent covers a cyber security cache system that keeps track of whether content is permitted under various policies.
Regarding Finjan’s allegations that Blue Coat infringed its US patent number 6,154,844, Blue Coat argued that Finjan failed to apportion appropriate damages, and that an $8-per-user royalty rate was unsupported by substantial evidence.
While the court agreed that the figures were inaccurate, it said that there is substantial evidence suggesting Blue Coat’s infringement of the ‘844 patent, which recites a “system and method for providing computer security by attaching a security profile to a downloadable”.
The court said: “There is no evidence that Finjan ever actually used or proposed an $8-per-user fee in any comparable licence or negotiation.”
It continued that the figure is based on testimony from Finjan’s vice president of IP licensing, Ivan Chaperot. According to the court, the number is a “starting point” in licensing negotiations of an “8 to 16% royalty rate or something that is consistent with that ... like $8-per-user fee”.
Despite this, the court did not issue a judgment of non-infringement on the ‘844 patent.
The other patents that Blue Coat were sued for infringing were US number 7,418,731, covering a “system and method for providing computer security at a network gateway by comparing security profiles associated with requested files to the security policies of requesting users”; and US patent number 7,647,633, which relates to a system for using “mobile code runtime monitoring” protecting against malicious downloads.
The court also backed the previous finding of infringement of the ‘731 patent. Blue Coat did not appeal against the earlier judgment on the ‘633 patent.
In a previous case between the companies, Finjan was awarded $40 million in 2015, after Blue Coat was fined for infringing Finjan’s web security patents.
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