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22 January 2014Patents

Google faces $125 million damages in Texas court

A US court has found that features of Google’s Android system infringe a patent owned by SimpleAir, which is seeking $125 million in damages.

Calling itself a technology licensing company, SimpleAir said that the Google Cloud Messaging and Android Cloud to Device Messaging infringe its US patent 7,035,914.

The patent is directed to a system and method for transmitting data, while the Google services process and send instant notifications for Android applications.

Following a week-long trial, a jury at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled unanimously on January 18 that Google infringed five claims of the ‘914 patent and that each claim was valid, SimpleAir said.

The patent’s validity was previously upheld in a re-examination proceeding at the US Patent and Trademark Office in February 2013.

“We are grateful for the jury’s hard work in this case and pleased with their verdict,” said John Payne, the majority owner of SimpleAir. “There was a lot of information presented to the jury and they did an exceptional job figuring out what mattered and what didn’t. We look forward to addressing the issue of damages in the second trial and hope the jury in that trial will be as dedicated as this one was.”

SimpleAir holds eight US patents and has several pending applications covering the technology areas of wireless content delivery, mobile applications and push notifications.

The company filed suit against Google and several other technology companies, including Microsoft, Motorola, Samsung, Nokia, HTC, Huawei and LG, in 2011, before the US passed the America Invents Act (AIA).

Had the case been filed after the AIA came into effect, the outcome “might have been different”, said David Newman, partner at Arnstein & Lehr LLP in Chicago.

That’s because the AIA introduced a rule banning the enjoinder of multiple defendants in patent lawsuits.

“You would have seen the case take a much different course,” Newman said, “You wonder whether SimpleAir would have filed this at all had it had to file separate cases.”

In addition, said Newman, there are now separate procedures for assessing post-grant challenges to “business method” patents, which means with extra scrutiny the ‘914 may have been invalidated.

SimpleAir has licensed inventions to “many leading technology companies”, a statement said. One such company is Apple, which was sued by SimpleAir for infringing the ‘914 patent (and other patents) before the companies settled out of court in May 2012.

Google now faces SimpleAir’s attempt to reclaim $125 million in damages.

Although the Eastern District of Texas has traditionally been seen as a plaintiff-friendly court, Newman noted, “things have evened out” now.

"The Eastern District of Texas is not much different to other popular venues for patent cases. I don’t know that a jury there will handle a case much differently than other jurisdictions.”

Google did not respond to a request for comment.

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