Expert’s Testimony That Large Standards Essential Portfolio Licenses Establish “Upper Limit” of Damages for a Single Patent Excluded

The court granted plaintiff's motion to exclude the testimony of defendant's damages expert regarding a running royalty rate as unreliable because it relied on non-comparable license agreements. "Defendant argues that [its expert] is not using these licenses to estimate a reasonable royalty, but instead only to set an appropriate upper limit to Plaintiffs damages claims. Defendant's theory is that the Company A and B licenses -- because they concern large, worldwide portfolios of standard-essential patents -- are economically comparable to the [patent-in-suit] in the sense that their value compared to a single asserted patent is much greater. . . . [Defendant's expert] provides no opinion that even attempts to describe the value of the patented technology in any specificity, in order to compare the value of the [patent-in-suit] to these large patent portfolios. He simply makes the bare assertion that these standard-essential, FRAND portfolios should intuitively be worth far more than a single asserted patent. . . . [His] failure to even attempt to reference the economic value of the patented technology in any specificity, or that of the standard-essential FRAND licenses he compares it to, renders his damages opinion fatally insufficient."

M2M Solutions LLC v. Motorola Solutions Inc. et al, 1-12-cv-00033 (DED February 25, 2016, Order) (Andrews, J.)