Appeals Court Vacates $100 Million Award Against DirecTV
Finds 2006 Trial Incorrectly Construed Vital Term In Original Complaint
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 4/21/2008 9:09:00 AM
DirecTV won a major legal victory, worth more than $100 million, last Friday when a federal appeals court sent a patent-infringement case back to a lower court.
The appeals court vacated a jury award and judge’s decision that mandated that DirecTV had to pay more than $100 million to Finisar, which provides fiber-optic systems for high-speed data networks.
The court sent Finisar’s patent-infringement suit back to a lower court.
The appeals court determined that the district court that handled the 2006 jury trial “incorrectly construed a vital term featured prominently in each asserted claim” and made other errors.
The patent in question involved different ways to transmit and broadcast digital information to a wide base of subscribers.
In June 2006 a jury awarded Finisar $78.9 million from DirecTV in the patent-infringement case, and the next month a judge awarded Finisar an additional $25 million.
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