Google To Face Hefty Fine For SimpleAir Push Notification Patent Infringement

Federal Jury Finds Google Infringed SimpleAir Patent January 21, 2014 03:45 PM Eastern Standard Time MARSHALL, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–SimpleAir announced today that a federal jury returned a verdict that SimpleAir’s U.S. Patent No. 7,035,914 is infringed by Google. The verdict was reached on Saturday, January 18, 2014, following a week-long trial presided over by the Honorable Rodney Gilstrap, U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Texas. “We are grateful for the jury’s hard work in this case and pleased with their verdict” SimpleAir had alleged that Google’s push notification services for the Android smartphones and tablets infringed five claims of the ‘914 patent. The jury agreed unanimously on all counts of infringement and also found unanimously that each claim was valid. The validity of the patent had previously been confirmed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office during a Reexamination proceeding that concluded in February 2013. The accused services are the Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) and Android Cloud to Device Messaging (C2DM) services. The services are used by Google to process and send instant notifications for Android applications, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision on the amount of damages to award for Google’s infringement. The damages issue will be decided by a separate jury in a limited second trial. SimpleAir will seek damages in excess of $125 million for Google’s infringement in the damages retrial. “We are grateful for the jury’s hard work in this case and pleased with their verdict,” said John Payne, who is the lead inventor and majority owner of SimpleAir. “There was a lot of information presented to the jury and they did an exceptional job figuring out what mattered and what didn’t. We look forward to addressing the issue of damages in the second trial and hope the jury in that trial will be as dedicated as this one was.” SimpleAir is an inventor-owned technology licensing company. The company holds eight issued U.S. Patents and several pending patent applications in the areas of wireless content delivery, mobile applications, and push notifications. SimpleAir has licensed its inventions to many leading technology companies. SimpleAir is represented by Greg Dovel, Jeff Eichmann, and Simon Franzini of Dovel & Luner LLP and by Calvin Capshaw, Elizabeth DeRieux, and Jeff Rambin of Capshaw DeRieux LLP.