Jury rules Cisco owes $70 million for patent fraud

On Friday evening, a jury ruled that Cisco owes patent licenser XpertUniverse Inc $70 million in damages for obtaining patented technology in a fraudulent manner, Reuters reported. The jury ruled that Cisco owed an additional $34,000 for violating two XpertUniverse patents, as well.

XpertUniverse, a New York-based company, brought the case in the US District Court of Delaware. The company said that Cisco violated non-disclosure terms agreed upon when the two organizations started working together in 2004. The agreement stated “Cisco would distribute technology XpertUniverse had developed to efficiently match customers with call center experts,” wrote Reuters.

Cisco ended the relationship in 2007 and one year later launched its “Expert on Demand” service that, for example, a company might use to set up a hotline for its customers. XpertUniverse brought its suit in 2009.

There are two patents at issue in the case. The first is patent number 7366709 (the '709 patent), which is described as a “system and method for managing questions and answers using subject lists styles.” The second is patent number 7499903 (the '903 patent), which covers “semantic to non-semantic routing for locating a live expert.” Both of these deal with matching human inquiries with the right information from a database, or connecting that human with a subject matter expert.

Cisco told Reuters it was “extremely disappointed” with the verdict, and the company will appeal if the judge lets the current award stand. On the other side, an attorney from XpertUniverse said the company was "obviously very happy" with the verdict.