Appeals Court Overturns $49M Patent Award Against TARGUSinfo

WASHINGTON, DC, September 3, 2008 — The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected on Aug. 29, 2008 the enhanced-damage award issued against TARGUSinfo and vacated the $49 million damages award against Targus Information Corporation (TARGUSinfo) in a patent suit over technology for routing calls to 800-numbers.

TARGUSinfo has been in a patent dispute in the field of location-based services and intelligent call routing with 800 Adept who sued TARGUSinfo in US District Court for the Middle District of Florida in 2002 claiming patent infringement. A six-week trial in the fall of 2006 ended with the jury finding that TARGUSinfo had willfully infringed on Adept technology. A $49 million verdict was issued against TARGUSinfo plus approximately $6 million in attorney fees.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit saw the ruling as having a faulty claim construction and cited other trial-court errors.

“Under the correct claim construction, no reasonable jury could find that TARGUSinfo infringes the asserted claims of Adept’s patents,” Senior Judge S. Jay Plager wrote for the panel, which included Judges Arthur Gajarsa and Timothy Dyk. “In light of these determinations, we vacate the trial court’s damages award, the permanent injunction, and the judgment with respect to willfulness, enhanced damages and attorney fees.”

George G. Moore, TARGUSinfo CEO and a co-inventor of the patents with TARGUSinfo CTO Jim Shaffer, said: “This is indeed a great victory for our company, for our customers and for the marketplace. We always believed that there was never any basis for this lawsuit and that the jury verdict was totally misguided. We refused to settle and had the courage of our convictions to see it through to the Appeals Court.”

William Lee, a partner in Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr’s Boston office who represented TARGUSinfo, was satisfied with the appellate court ruling. “The claims against TARGUSinfo are over,” he said.

Stephen Milbrath, a partner at Orlando’s Allen, Dyer, Doppelt, Milbrath & Gilchrist, co-represented 800 Adept with Michael Maher from the Maher Law Firm in Orlando.

About TARGUSinfo
TARGUSinfo is the leading provider of On-Demand InformationSM services. Its unique identification, verification, qualification and location solutions enable retailers, call-center operators, Web-based marketers, communication service providers and others to dramatically increase the quality of their services and the effectiveness of their marketing. A privately held company, TARGUSinfo is headquartered in Vienna, Va. For more information, visit www.TARGUSinfo.com.

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