Last spring, when a tiny patent holding company called DataTreasury went to trial against U.S. Bancorp in federal district court in Marshall, Texas, the result was a huge win for the company: a jury verdict of $27 million and a finding of willful infringement that could result in treble damages. For DataTreasury, which has already collected at least $350 million in licensing fees for its business method patent on check processing, the verdict was a big confidence boost in advance of its much larger patent infringement case against Bank of America, in which the company is demanding almost $900 million in damages, according to Bloomberg.
That trial began Tuesday in the courtroom of East Texas Chief Judge David Folsom (despite a joint dismissal of claims between DataTreasury and BofA’s parent company on Friday). But can we expect DataTreasury’s lead trial counsel, Nelson Roach of Nix, Patterson & Roach, to be just a little more careful with his words than he was in the Bancorp case?
