The nation’s top patent court has given its seal of approval to a hefty $1.4 million award of legal fees against the largest publicly traded “non-practicing entity,” Acacia Research Corporation.
The award was granted one year ago by US District Judge Gregory Sleet, and it was one of the first to be decided under the new Octane Fitness caselaw, which makes it easier for defendants to get their legal fees in baseless patent suits. On Friday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld (PDF) Sleet’s decision without further comment.
The case was brought in 2010 by an Acacia subsidiary called Summit Data Systems LLC, created to assert two patents against the server storage industry. The case hinged on an accusation that NetApp infringed a pair of patents when its server-based software interacted with an end user on a Microsoft operating system. The two patents-in-suit, 7,392,291 and 7,428,581, relate to “block-level storage access over a computer network.”
But Acacia had already been paid for these two patents, selling a group license to “defensive aggregator” RPX Corporation, which provided coverage for the patents to 43 member companies, including Microsoft.
NetApp found out about the license during discovery, and the company argued it was covered and couldn’t be sued. Summit Data backed down and was willing to drop its case, but NetApp insisted on its right to pursue legal fees.
After reviewing the evidence, Sleet utterly speared Summit on the fee motions, giving not just the full award but adding in costs that typically aren’t recoverable, such as expert fees.