This week’s reminder of the often high costs of patent litigation comes to us from a Pennsylvania court, which ordered plaintiff Checkpoint Systems to pay for the attorney fees and costs for defendants All-Tag and Sensormatic, totaling $6.6 million. The court awarded the fees after it found the case to be exceptional, primarily because Checkpoint’s infringement expert never looked at the actual accused products in relation to the patent-in-suit (instead, it reviewed products made in a different country and also defendant’s patents).
And as a reminder of how slowly the wheels of justice sometimes turn, this trial (and the jury finding in favor of defendants) occurred 4.5 years ago – in February 2007.
Checkpoint Systems v. All-Tag Security, et. al., 2-01-cv-02223 (E.D. PA, November 2, 2011, Order)(Tucker)