A federal district court awarded Desmarais LLP’s client, Cisco Systems, $1.9 million in attorneys’ fees for the work performed by Desmarais LLP in successfully defending Cisco Systems against patent infringement claims brought by Straight Path IP Group for which it sought up to $123 million in damages.
The May 19, 2020 decision – a key ruling to directly address recovery of alternative fee arrangement-based fees in patent cases pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 285 – provides clear confirmation that law firms using flat-fee billing can collect attorneys’ fees in patent cases, just the same as firms using traditional hourly billing. The case was in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Desmarais LLP earned several key victories in district court and before the Federal Circuit on behalf of Cisco during the litigation that involved patents related to point-to-point Internet communication.
In November 2017, just three months after taking over the case, Desmarais LLP achieved a summary judgment win in district court that dismissed all infringement claims against Cisco. About a year later, in January 2019, the firm secured the victory on appeal before the Federal Circuit, which upheld the district court’s ruling and fully dismissed the claims.
Additionally, in the recent ruling on attorneys’ fees, the judge noted that Desmarais LLP has used flat-fee billing since its founding in 2010 and that U.S. law governing the recovery of attorneys’ fees under § 285 does not provide a specific calculation or billing method that firms should use when seeking to recover these fees.
“Given adequate records delineating separate matters, flat-rate billing may prove just as effective an approximation of general billing practices. Indeed, as courts and counsel become accustomed to the method, the method may well become as ‘readily administrable’ as the lodestar method,” the ruling states.
Desmarais LLP partners John Desmarais and Justin Wilcox, of counsel Jordan Malz, and associates Steven Balcof and Jennifer Przybylski represented Cisco in the case.
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