Federal Circuit Judge Randall Rader has been sitting by designation as a district court judge in the Northern District of New York. His case is an epic patent battle between Cornell University and Hewlett-Packard (HP), and the jury trial recently concluded with an $184 million calculated as 0.8% of HP’s $23 Billion in sales.
The patent — No. 4,807,115 — issued in 1989 and expired during the seven years of litigation. It is directed toward an internal computer messaging mechanism that boosts the function of multi-processor computers.
Interestingly, Cornell and HP had discussed a licensing agreement as early as 1988 (even before the patent issued). In 1997, Intel licensed the ‘115 patent for use in its Pentium Pro chips.
Unpublished Thesis: In a pre-trial decision, Judge Rader denied Cornell’s motion in limine and allowed HP to show the jury an unpublished masters degree thesis as 102(b) prior art. The court found the thesis publicly accessible because the thesis had been cited in a later article that was in the same area of technology as the issued patent (analogous art.).
“After weighing all the circumstances of accessibility, this court views as vitally important the citation of this scholarly work in the Tjaden-Flynn article.”
Inventor Rewards: Unlike most companies, universities generally offer a percentage royalty cut for its employee-inventors. Professor Torng, the inventor of the ‘115 patent, will reportedly receive 25% of the award (if it is ever paid). Torng has announced that he’ll only keep a few million and donate the rest (perhaps over $30 million) to charity.
The post-trial decisions and eventual appeal should be interesting.
