Finnegan trial team defeats $260 million patent and trade dress suit for clients ABBYY Software and Lexmark

Following a two-week trial, a jury in the Northern District of California returned a unanimous defense verdict in favor of Finnegan clients ABBYY USA Software House, Inc. (of Milpitas, California), ABBYY Software, Ltd. (of Nicosia, Cyprus), ABBYY Production LLC (of Moscow, Russia), and Lexmark International, Inc. (of Lexington, Kentucky). Nuance Communications, Inc., had accused the ABBYY companies of infringing two patents directed to optical character recognition (OCR) software and a third patent directed to distributed document processing over a computer network. Nuance also sued Lexmark, a former Nuance customer, after it stopped using Nuance products and began using ABBYY’s OCR software. In addition, Nuance alleged that ABBYY infringed its trade dress for software packaging used for retail and internet sales. Prior to trial, Nuance sought more than $260 million in damages from the defendants. Nuance also alleged willful infringement and sought treble damages and attorneys’ fees from the defendants. The jury rejected Nuance’s infringement allegations in their entirety, returning a verdict of no infringement for all three Nuance patents and that Nuance’s alleged trade dress was not protectable. The Federal Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment.