After a jury
unanimously decided last September that Meta owed $175 million to walkie-talkie app-maker Voxer for patent infringement, Meta tried to avoid paying up by requesting a judge either reject the jury's verdict or give Meta a new trial. This week, a federal judge denied Meta’s request, making it likely that Meta will have to pay all those running royalties for illegally copying Voxer’s technology and using it to launch Facebook Live and Instagram Live.
Meta had argued seemingly everything it could to get out of paying millions in damages. It questioned whether the jury’s decision was reasonable, claiming that Voxer’s lawyer had made comments that biased the jury. In Meta’s view, no reasonable jury would have found that Meta infringed Voxer’s patented video-streaming and messaging technologies. Further, even if everyone agreed that there was infringement, Meta argued that the damages were too extreme and improperly calculated by Voxer’s expert. Instead of owing running royalties, Meta felt it should be required to pay either no damages or a lump sum.
In his
decision, US District Judge Lee Yeakel affirmed that substantial evidence supported the jury’s verdict of patent infringement and sufficient evidence supported the damages that the jury awarded Voxer.
Meta can still appeal, but a Meta spokesperson declined to tell Ars if the company will.
Ars could not immediately reach Voxer to comment, but this week’s decision inches the company closer to the end of a decade-long legal saga that started in 2012 when Voxer first met with Facebook to discuss a potential partnership.
According to Voxer’s complaint, Voxer began developing its technology in 2006, hoping to help improve battlefield communications. US army veteran Tom Katis co-founded the company, wanting to create a live-messaging and video-streaming app that would help eliminate interruptions in transmissions that left soldiers vulnerable during sudden ambushes or when medevacs were needed. That ambition morphed into the walkie-talkie app that Voxer launched in 2011, which was so popular, it prompted meetings with Facebook by 2012.
arstechnica.com
