Foley & Lardner LLP announced today that it secured victory for Green Shades Software Inc. (Green Shades) in its successful trial defense against accusations of patent infringement. After seven years of litigation, a Florida federal jury’s findings on Monday cleared Green Shades of all claims of patent infringement and found that the patent claims at issue were not valid to begin with.
Green Shades was sued in 2015 by the plaintiff Aatrix Software, Inc. (Aatrix), which alleged that several of Green Shades’ products had since 2007 infringed upon a pair of their data manipulation patents. At trial, Aatrix demanded between $22 and $35 million dollars from Green Shades for the alleged infringements.
After more than two weeks of trial, a jury unanimously found that not a single product of Green Shades’ infringed upon any patent claim of Aatrix, and that by clear and convincing evidence Aatrix had wrongfully applied for its patent more than a year after commercializing its invention. As a result, its asserted patent claims were invalid under the ‘on-sale bar’ rule, which prohibits patents on inventions that were on sale more than a year before the patent application was filed.
The Foley trial team was led by Partners Natalie Hirt Adams and Jason Mehta.
