ATEN International v. Uniclass was decided on August 6, 2019 on appeal from the Central District of California. The district court granted defendant Uniclass summary judgment on plaintiff ATEN’s lost profits theory of damages. So ATEN “proceeded to trial based on a reasonable royalty theory of damages, under which its expert testified that the maximum recovery (not including its requested treble damages) was $678,337.” At trial, the jury found that Uniclass did not infringe the asserted claims of ATEN’s patents. The jury also found the asserted claims of one patent invalid. Following trial, the district court denied Uniclass’s motion for attorney fees. Uniclass appealed.
The Federal Circuit affirmed the denial of attorney fees.
The district court did not abuse its discretion in holding that the case was not exceptional. Uniclass argued that “this case is exceptional because the cost of litigating the case exceeded ATEN’s potential recovery at trial.” The Federal Circuit rejected this argument. “There is no per se rule that a case is exceptional if litigation costs exceed the potential damages.” “Litigation strategies motivating a patent suit are many, with monetary damages being one.” Moreover, ATEN sought injunctive relief against Uniclass, a “direct competitor,” meaning that “[t]he case could have proceeded to trial requesting only an injunction, and there would be no potential damages to compare to ATEN’s expenses.”
The district court did not err in failing to discuss the strength of ATEN’s lost profit theory in its attorney fees analysis. “Though ATEN’s lost profits theory was not strong enough to withstand summary judgment, a party’s position ultimately need not be correct” to avoid attorney fees. The district court “had no obligation to write an opinion that reveals its assessment of every consideration.”
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Lastly, the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining “that ATEN’s positions were not so objectively unreasonable or exceptionally meritless as to stand out from other cases.”
ATEN Int’l Co. v. Uniclass Tech. Co., 932 F.3d 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2019)