A federal jury has returned a verdict that Google owes $85 million in damages for infringing SimpleAir’s U.S. Patent No. 7,035,914. A separate jury had unanimously determined in January 2014 that Google infringed all five asserted claims of the ‘914 patent and that each claim was valid. This trial was limited to the issue of damages and concluded on March 19, 2014.

The infringing 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 push notifications for Android applications such as Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail.

In the damages trial, Google argued that it should only have to pay $6 million and that this amount should cover not just past infringement but all future infringement of the ‘914 patent, which does not expire until 2017.

SimpleAir argued in return that damages should be assessed between $127 million to $146 million for past infringement alone. The jury returned a verdict that Google owes $85 million in damages just for past infringement. Damages for Google’s ongoing and future infringement will be addressed in future proceedings.

SimpleAir is a technology licensing company. The company holds ten issued U.S. Patents and several pending patent applications in the areas of wireless content delivery, mobile applications, and push notifications. SimpleAir’s ‘914 patent, the patent that was asserted against Google, was subject to a Reexamination proceeding that concluded in February 2013 with all original claims confirmed.

SimpleAir is represented by Dovel & Luner and by Capshaw DeRieux.

[Image courtesy: SimpleAir]