US District Judge Raymond Jackson has handed out Vringo the payout it sought from Google for infringing on its AdWords patents – 1.36 percent of Google’s AdWords revenue.
Just last week Judge Jackson had ruled that the tweaked AdWords wasn’t different from the system described by two Vringo held patents and had offered both the companies one last chance to sit down and decide on a royalty rate, but that didn’t happen. So today the court hammered out the rate for them [PDF].
Vringo purchased some patents from an old search engine Lycos in 2011 and later on went on to sue Google. The company won the lawsuit through jury trial in December 2012 and was awarded $30 million, but this amount was far less compared to what it sought from Google.
Today, the jury ordered in favor of Vringa granting it a 1.36 percent running royalty on US-based revenue from Google’s flagship program, AdWords. Though it’s not possible to know exactly how much Vringo’s win would be in total, it is guaranteed that Google will have to dole out hundreds of millions of dollars as royalty.
Today’s order sets a royalty rate at 6.5 percent, on a “royalty base” of 20.9 percent, for an overall rate of 1.3585 percent. The royalty base is supposed to calculate what the Vringo-owned patents add to Google’s search system.
The lead lawyer on Vringo’s trial team, Jeffrey Sherwood, rejoicing the court’s decision said that “My reaction is pretty darn positive.” notes Ars Technica.
Google’s lead patent lawyer on the Vringo case, Jennifer Polse, said that they have already appealed against the jury verdict and will also appeal against today’s royalty award as well.
“We believe strongly in our pending appeal in this matter, and we anticipate seeking Federal Circuit review of today’s decision as well,” said Polse in an e-mailed statement to Ars.
Vringo also sued Microsoft over ads in its Bing search engine last year. The case however settled in May when Microsoft agreed to pay $1 million plus which is just 5 percent of whatever Google will ultimately be paying.
Vringo stock rose more than 13 percent before its trading was reportedly halted.
