Federal Judiciary

epicRealm patent case tried to verdict in Texarkana

By Michael Smith

Friday late afternoon Judge Folsom charged the jury in the case formerly known as epicRealm (plaintiff is now named Parallel Networks, LLC) against defendants FriendFinder and Various, Inc.  As I posted recently, a number of the claims in this case were summary judged out recently, and the remaining claims were tried to a Texarkana jury (oneof the defendants was severed out into a later trial - the rest have settled).  Parallel Networks contended that the defendants infringe claims of two patents by providing Internet web pages using techniques covered by the patents-in-suit, within the United States, and sought damages in the form of a reasonable royalty.  FriendFinder and Various denied the plaintiff's contentions regarding infringement, and asserted that the claims of the patents are invalid.  There was a claim of willfulness, but it was dropped prior to trial.

The jury's deliberations were not without drama - almost immediately on Friday the jury started sending notes saying they could not reach a verdict.  Judge Folsom issued an Allen charge yesterday (call your local counsel to ask what those are) and there were several notes from the jury to the effect that they could not reach a verdict.  A couple of hours after the Allen charge the jury finally returned a verdict for the plaintiff, i.e. that the patent was infringed and was not invalid.  The damages were $1,257,000 million, which I'm advised was the defendant's damages model - the plaintiff had asked for $60 million. 

Full post as published by Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice on August 26, 2008 (boomark / email).