Cisco seeks new trial after $1.9bn patent loss to Centripetal
Cisco has demanded a new trial, after a US judge ordered the technology company to pay $1.9 billion in damages, in addition to royalties, for infringing four patents owned by Centripetal Networks.
In a decision handed down on October 5, Judge Henry Morgan of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia noted many inconsistencies in Cisco’s evidence, holding that damages were an appropriate compensation.
The judge argued that imposing an injunction on the infringing products would likely cause “massive adverse effects on the functional capabilities of Cisco’s customers and have an adverse ripple effect on national defence and the protection of the global internet”.
However, in a motion filed on Monday, November 2, Cisco argued Centripetal failed to prove that “Cisco or anyone else ever made, used, or sold a directly-infringing combination in the US”.
Consequently, the company has requested that the court amend its findings and judgment to include findings that Centripetal did not prove “any acts of direct infringement or the extent of any alleged direct infringement”.
It also argued that the damages award, if any, should be no more than $3,014,561; and that the court also amend the judgment to reflect that it is a “partial final judgment”.
This was because the “the complaint in this matter asserted 11 patents”, the company said, and while Cisco petitioned for inter partes review of nine of those patents, and the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board instituted review “on at least some claims in seven of them”, the court’s judgment covered only the patent claims at issue in the trial, not the “stayed patent claims”.
The company objected to the amount of damages awarded, on the grounds that, “even if Centripetal had shown some act of direct infringement, the court would still have to amend the damages award because Centripetal made no attempt to show the actual extent of infringement”.
It further argued that the court did not find that “every one of the accused products would meet the claims’ limitations when sold or used by themselves”, and that “there was no evidence that switches and routers used would infringe any asserted claim”.
Accordingly, the court must limit any damages award, the company said.
The company also held Centripetal’s damages theory, “which presumed that Centripetal was entitled to royalties on all units of the accused products without regard for whether they were used in the required combinations or whether the combinations were even made, used, or sold in the US” was unsupported.
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