Federal Judiciary

Judge Clark finds patent invalid on remand in Finisar v. DirecTV

By Michael C. Smith

  An eagle-eyed reader asked yesterday what effect Judge Clark's May 19 ruling finding the patent invalid in Finisar v. DirecTV, No. 1:05cv264 had on my recent statement that the last 2 1/2 years the results at trial in patent cases in the Eastern District are 17-17.  The short answer is none, as the Finisar trial was before the period I was referring to, so I wasn't counting it as a plaintiff's win because they won at trial or as a defense win because the Federal Circuit set aside the verdict and remanded.  Finisar was, incidentally, the last in the string of consecutive plaintiff's verdicts that ended in the fall of 2006.  But a little more background is in order.
In the summer of 2006, a Beaumont jury returned a verdict of $78.9 million for Finisar in Judge Ron Clark's court, following the court's pretrial ruling that while seven of the asserted claims were invalid as indefinite, seven were not.  Whether this was a plaintiff or defense win depends on who you believe - the plaintiffs claimed a win because they won about four times what the defense said the proper measure of damages was, assuming infringement and invaldity (which were contested) while the defendants told me that they won because the damages were about three percent of what the plaintiff had sought at trial.
The case went up on appeal and the Federal Circuit reversed in part, remanding for reconsideration due to a change it made in the court's claims construction (they do that, you know).  See Finisar Corp. v. DirecTV Group, Inc., 523 F.3d 1323, 1341 (Fed. Cir. 2008).  On remand, Judge Clark invited briefing on the invalidity issues under the new construction, and on Tuesday of this week granted the motion for summary judgment that the remaining asserted claims were either anticipated or obvious.

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on May 22, 2009 (boomark / email).