Federal Judiciary

Final judgment entered in Pressure Products case

By Michael Smith

Pressure Products Medical Supplies v. Quan Emerteq Corp., No. 9:06cv121
Judge: Ron Clark
Holding: Final Judgment
In June of this year the Beaumont jury in Judge Clark's court (passing on a Lufkin case tried in Beaumont) returned a verdict in Pressure Products Medical Supplies v. Quan Emerteq Corp. No. 9:06cv121.  It found that both of the products infringed all of the asserted claims, but that none of the infringement was willful.  The jury found that the defendant had failed to show by clear and convincing evidence that any of the asserted claims were invalid as obvious or anticipated, and assessed damages at $1.1 million.
Judge Clark conducted a hearing hearing on the post-trial motions for July 31, and today entered judgment awarding the plaintiff the $1,100,000.00 in damages found by the jury for infringement; pre-judgment interest from 7/31/04 through 8/15/08 in the amount of $309,992.00; attorney's fees in the amount of $104,206.00; post judgment interest on the entire sum calculated pursuant to 28 USC 1961 at the rate of 2.23% and costs of court. (Parenthetically, that's not a rogue decimal point in the attorney's fees - despite the AIPLA study referenced in Mary Alice Robbins' article, which is cited frequently, this case was tried through verdict for fees of $104,206, half a million less than the estimated cost for a case in which less than a million was at stake.  One wonders- or more precisely one who isn't familiar with the efficient manner in which Judge Clark manages the patent cases in his court might wonder - what happened to the other half million?).  Judge Clark further entered an injunction prohibiting the defendant from selling certain infringing products, but stayed the injunction for a certain product if the defendant deposits royalties into an escrow account.
Since there has been some interest recently in time to trial in patent cases, I thought I would mention that this case was answered on October 19, 2006 - that's 22 months and one day from answer to final judgment following a jury trial.  Again, this is a Lufkin case tried in Beaumont, not a Marshall case.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on August 20, 2008 (boomark / email).