MARSHALL – Evaluating motions for post-trial relief from both the plaintiff and defendant, Judge Robert W. Schroeder of the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas granted more damages and denied a new trial in a patent infringement case.
The ruling was made April 23. The court awarded Elbit Systems of America LLC and Elbit Systems Land and C4I LTD $174,326 in unopposed costs, more than $1 million in damages for pre-verdict infringement and $4.6 million in damages for post-verdict infringement in addition to attorneys' fees.
The case between satellite service provider Hughes Network Systems and defense company Elbit Systems found that the Hughes infringed on Elbit's patent. The jury previously awarded more than $21 million in damages to Elbit in August 2017.
In ruling on the case, Schroeder cited argumentative behavior by the defendant and other problematic responses, for example, the court’s finding that the defendant “ignored” court orders relating to discovery.
In another place in the opinion, Schroeder chronicles the defendant’s motion on equitable estoppel this way: “Hughes’s motion fails on a factual basis.”
Schroeder also pointed to the defendant’s invalidity contentions that, according to the court, “presented an essentially limitless number of possible obviousness combinations in clear contravention of the local rules.”
The defendant also provided some documents weeks after the court’s deadline.
“Disclosing a completely unreasonable number of obviousness combinations in your contentions, waiting until opposing counsel objects, then supplementing them three weeks after the deadline with a reservation that you may still rely on the originally disclosed number of combinations serves no purpose other than to increase the litigation costs for both sides and the burden on the court,” Schroeder wrote. “...Considering Hughes’s litigation misconduct in sum, however, the court finds that this case is exceptional and stands out in comparison to the mine-run of cases.”