Google to pay Vringo $15.8M for infringing old Lycos patents
Reuters reported today that Vringo released a statement to confirm a jury has upheld its patent claims against a handful of companies. One of those companies is Google, which was found to infringe two old Lycos patents. Vringo is receiving much less than the $696 million it sought—$30 million from all the companies combined. Of that, Google will pay $15.8 million:
Vringo inherited the lawsuit after it acquired Innovate/Protect (I/P), a company which specializes in monetizing intellectual property, in March.
I/P had filed a patent infringement lawsuit against AOL, Google, IAC, Gannett and Target Corp in 2011.
After finding that the patent claims were both valid and infringed by Google, the jury found that reasonable royalty damages should be based on a “running royalty”, and that the running royalty rate should be 3.5 percent, Vringo said.
