Federal Circuit Clears Finjan’s ‘408 Patent and Awards Costs

Finjan Holdings (NASDAQ:FNJN) announced that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have ruled in its favor in a patent trail case against Palo Alto Networks.

As quoted in the press release:

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (“the Court”) affirmed the USPTO, Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (“PTAB”) findings in two inter partes reviews that Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (“Palo Alto Networks”) failed to carry its burden of demonstrating that any of the challenged claims of Finjan’s U.S. Patent No. 8,225,408 (the “‘408 Patent”) is obvious over certain prior art. The Court held that the PTAB’s findings were supported by “substantial evidence” and found no error. The Court also awarded costs of the appeal to Finjan.

“Finjan is gratified to have the Federal Circuit’s decision affirming the USPTO’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s decision rejecting Palo Alto Networks’ challenges to Finjan’s ‘408 Patent,” stated Julie Mar-Spinola, CIPO and VP, Legal Operations for Finjan. “While this allowed Palo Alto Networks to delay Finjan’s day in court for nearly four years, we believe we are due and will seek past and accrued damages for that period until resolution, which is not insignificant.”

The appeal by Palo Alto Networks (CAFC No. 2017-2059) was from PTAB Nos. IPR2015-02001, IPR2016-00157, IPR2016-00955, and IPR2016-00956, the latter two of which were petitions filed by Blue Coat Systems (now Symantec), which settled with Finjan earlier this year.

Finjan also has pending infringement lawsuits against ESET and its affiliates, Cisco Systems, Inc., Sonicwall, Inc., Bitdefender and its affiliates, Juniper Networks, Zscaler, Inc. and Checkpoint and its affiliates, relating to, collectively, more than 20 patents in the Finjan portfolio. The court dockets for the foregoing cases are publicly available on the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) website, www.pacer.gov, which is operated by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Click here for the full text release.