While the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Bilski, et al. v. Kappos may have been the most anticipated ruling in intellectual property circles in 2010, it ultimately did little to clarify what precisely is worthy of patent protection and really couldn’t be seen as a victory for either of the parties directly involved. What follows is our rundown of the IP matters that either did deliver big results for those on either side — or had major implications in the broader IP arena.
• Boies, Schiller bags a big one: It took an Oakland federal district court jury less than a day of deliberations to deliver the biggest jury award of the year — and the biggest ever in a copyright infringement case. The verdict: $1.3 billion to Oracle Corp. after the software company’s copyright damages trial against German rival SAP AG ended. A trial team led by Boies, Schiller & Flexner’s David Boies and Bingham McCutchen’s Geoffrey Howard persuaded the eight-person jury to adopt Oracle’s model of assessing damages for SAP’s admitted copying of Oracle software through a subsidiary, TomorrowNow. While the award was shy of the $1.65 billion Boies pushed for in his closing argument, it dwarfed the $40 million calculation that SAP’s lead Jones Day lawyer had argued for.
