Print PDF
McKool Smith Scores Two of Corporate Counsel's "10 Biggest IP Litigation Wins of 2011"
Two of McKool Smith's cases have been named in Corporate Counsel magazine's listing of the "10 Biggest IP Litigation Wins of 2011." Below are excerpts discussing Microsoft v. i4i and Versata v. SAP America. Click here to access the full article and list of wins.
David 2, Goliath 0
The U.S. Supreme Court doesn't hear many patent cases. And when it does, it rarely affirms the second-highest patent court in the land, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. So when the justices agreed to hear Microsoft Corporation's appeal of a 2009 patent infringement trial, the patent bar paid close attention.
At oral argument, Microsoft urged the justices not only to vacate a $290 million jury award it lost to a Canadian software developer called i4i Limited Partnership, but also to change a long-standing principle of patent law. Federal judges, like the one that first heard the i4i case, require "clear and convincing" evidence to invalidate a patent. Microsoft urged the justices to lessen that standard to "a preponderance of the evidence." Because the Court hinted in a past opinion that it might be open to liberalizing the standard, many patent litigators thought Microsoft could win, says Ken Liebman, a partner at Faegre & Benson who did not work on the case.
Instead, the justices issued a decision in June unanimously affirming i4i's win and maintaining the status quo for patent invalidation.
Another Door Opens
Talk about making lemonade out of lemons. In January, Versata Software Inc. and its lawyers at McKool Smith saw a $138.6 million patent infringement verdict against the U.S. subsidiary of German software giant SAP AG thrown out because the Federal Circuit formulated a new rule for calculating reasonable royalty rates in patent trials.
In a May retrial on damages, Versata ended up more than doubling its original verdict, winning $345 million from a jury in Marshall, Texas. Versata was awarded $260 million in lost profits and $85 million in reasonable royalties. The jury also found SAP, a leading maker of business software, has continued to infringe the patent, which relates to pricing technology.