WILMINGTON, Del. (Feb. 10, 2015) – Late Friday afternoon and following a nine-day trial, a jury in Wilmington, Delaware, awarded Susman Godfrey client Intellectual Ventures I LLC $17 million in patent infringement damages. The jury rejected defendant Symantec Corp.’s attempts to invalidate Intellectual Ventures’ three patents, and found that Symantec infringed two of them.
The federal patent infringement lawsuit addressed Symantec’s use of patented security software technologies contained in dozens of Symantec and Norton-branded antivirus, antispam and cloud-based antimalware software. Filed in December 2010, Symantec denied infringement and validity of all three patents. Alternatively, Symantec contended that Intellectual Ventures was entitled to zero dollars in damages.
Two of Symantec’s co-defendants settled in 2012 and 2013. “This trial represented a jury’s first look at Intellectual Ventures’ security software patents and Symantec’s extensive use of those patents,” said Parker Folse, the co-lead Susman Godfrey attorney for Intellectual Ventures. “We are grateful that the jury agreed with Intellectual Ventures, and confirmed that Symantec has, for years, infringed those valid patents.”
With three of the original four defendants now having settled or been found to infringe Intellectual Ventures’ patents, the fourth and final defendant, Trend Micro, goes to trial May 11, 2015. “We look forward to proving our case against Trend Micro later this spring,” added Brooke Taylor, Susman’s co-lead attorney for Intellectual Ventures.
The Susman Godfrey trial team comprised Seattle partners Folse and Taylor, Houston partner Richard W. Hess and Houston associates John Lahad and Weston O’Black. The case was Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Symantec Corp., 10-CV-1067-LPS, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Read more about this win at Law360 here.
