A jury in San Francisco federal court awarded Fenwick & West client Informatica Corp. (NSDQ: INFA) a $25 million verdict against Business Objects (NSDQ: BOBJ). The award was based on the finding that Business Objects willfully infringed two Informatica patents by sales of its Data Integrator product.
Fenwick & West filed the suit on behalf of Informatica in July 2002, asserting that the ActaWorks product, now sold by Business Objects as Data Integrator, infringes several Informatica patents including U.S. Patent Nos. 6,014,670 and 6,339,775, both entitled "Apparatus and Method for Performing Data Transformations in Data Warehousing." Earlier, the judge determined that, as a matter of law, Business Objects and customers’ use of the Data Integrator product infringed Informatica’s patents. Today, a jury determined that the patents are valid, that Business Objects' infringement was willful, and that a reasonable royalty for Business Objects’ infringement is $25 million. The jury’s determination that Business Objects infringement was willful permits the judge to increase this reasonable royalty damages award up to three times.
Fenwick & West will continue to vigorously defend Informatica's intellectual property rights. In later proceedings, the judge will determine the scope of any injunction to be entered against Business Objects, a potential award of enhanced damages and Informatica’s attorney’s fees, and Business Objects’ defense based on the claim that Informatica engaged in inequitable conduct. An appeal by Business Objects also is expected.
The Fenwick & West trial team included litigation partners Lynn Pasahow, David Hadden, Darren Donnelly and Virginia DeMarchi; and litigation associates Carolyn Chang, Ryan Tyz, David Lacy Kusters, David Schumann and Albert Sieber.
Fenwick & West attorneys have handled some of the most prominent IP litigation over the past two decades, including securing one of the largest IP litigation settlements of 2005--a $400M settlement for its client Compuware against IBM--and one of the largest patent verdicts of the past fifteen months, a $74.7M patent litigation verdict for client Asyst Technologies against Jenoptik. The firm is ranked by Managing Intellectual Property as one of the top five West coast firms for IP litigation and was recently awarded "Most Innovative Use of Technology by a Law Firm" by American Lawyer Media for the firm's proprietary electronic discovery tools.
Informatica Corporation (NASDAQ: INFA) is a leading provider of enterprise data integration software and services. With Informatica, organizations can gain greater business value by integrating all their information assets from across the enterprise. More than 2,700 companies worldwide rely on Informatica to reduce the cost and expedite the time to address data integration needs of any complexity and scale.