An Eastern District of Texas jury recently ordered Google to pay $85M to Texas-based, inventor-owned tech licensing company SimpleAir for infringing its patent. The award follows a separate jury’s unanimous determination in January that Google infringed all five asserted claims of the patent, which details a system and method for data communication connecting online network computers in real-time. The alleged infringing services—Google’s Cloud Messaging and Cloud-to-Device Messaging—are used to process and send push notifications to smartphones and tablets running Google’s Android operating system. These services are free to users and allow apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail to send push notifications from a server without requiring the phone or tablet to reach out and waste precious battery life.

In the damages trial, SimpleAir sought as much as $146M for past infringement while Google argued it owed no more than $6M for both past and future infringement of the patent, which expires in 2017. After deliberating for less than an hour, the Marshall jury settled on a number slightly above the average of the two at $85M. The award, however, is solely for past infringement—ongoing and future infringement will be determined at future proceedings. Thus, Google is not quite out of the woods yet.

Sources: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-03-19/google-told-to-pay-simpleair-85-million-in-web-patent-trial-1 http://www.law360.com/articles/520169/jury-dings-google-85m-for-infringing-simpleair-patent

For more information on this topic, please visit our Patent Litigation service page.

Klemchuk LLP is an Intellectual Property (IP), Technology, Internet, and Business law firm located in Dallas, TX.  The firm offers comprehensive legal services including litigation and enforcement of all forms of IP as well as registration and licensing of patents, trademarks, trade dress, and copyrights.  The firm also provides a wide range of technology, Internet, e-commerce, and business services including business planning, formation, and financing, mergers and acquisitions, business litigation, data privacy, and domain name dispute resolution.  Additional information about the IP law firm and its IP law attorneys may be found at www.klemchuk.com.

Klemchuk LLP hosts Culture Counts, a blog devoted to the discussion of law firm culture and corporate core values with frequent topics about positive work environment, conscious capitalism, entrepreneurial management, positive workplace culture, workplace productivity, and corporate core values.