On January 10, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit Court (CAFC) affirmed a U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruling that vacated a $1.3 million damages award in a patent infringement dispute between plaintiff Personal Audio, LLC and defendant CBS Corporation.
In September 2014, a district court jury awarded Personal Audio $1.3 million in damages for infringement of three claims of a patent related to a system for organizing audio files into segments. The district court vacated the ruling in July 2018 following an April 2015 PTAB inter partes review (IPR) decision that found the three claims unpatentable on the basis of 35 U.S.C. § 103[4], in which the “obviousness prior art combinations” render the ’504 Patent invalid.
