Sprint Communications Co. L.P. v. Time Warner Cable, Inc.

255 F. Supp. 3d 1134, 2017 WL 2345639, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 81699
CourtDistrict Court, D. Kansas
DecidedMay 30, 2017
DocketCase No. 11-2686-JWL
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 255 F. Supp. 3d 1134 (Sprint Communications Co. L.P. v. Time Warner Cable, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Sprint Communications Co. L.P. v. Time Warner Cable, Inc., 255 F. Supp. 3d 1134, 2017 WL 2345639, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 81699 (D. Kan. 2017).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

John W. Lungstrum, United States District Judge

This patent infringement case was tried to a jury in this Court from February 13, 2017, through March 3, 2017. By its verdict, the jury found the following: that Time Warner Cable1 infringed each of the [1138]*1138asserted claims of the five Sprint patents at issue;, that none of those claims is invalid; that Sprint proved reasonable, royalty damages in the amount of $139,800,000; and that Time Warner Cable’s infringement was willful. By Memorandum and Order of March 14, 2017, the Court issued findings of fact and conclusions of law, by which it rejected Time Warner Cable’s equitable defenses and denied Sprint’s claim' for enhanced damages. See Sprint Communications Co. L.P. v. Time Warner Cable, Inc., 2017 WL 978107 (D. Kan. Mar. 14, 2017) (Lungstrum, J.). Also on March 14, 2017, the Court entered judgment in Sprint’s favor in the amount of the jury verdict (plus postjudgment interest and costs).

This matter presently comes before the Court on Time Warner Cable’s posttrial motion for judgment as a matter of law pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(b) (Doc. #485). For the reasons set forth below, the Court denies the motion.2

This matter a]so comes before the Court on Sprint’s motion for an’ amendment of the judgment, pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 59, to add an award of prejudgment interest (Doc. #483). The Court grants the motion in part, and it awards Sprint prejudgment interest in the amount of $6,183,548.00. The ■ Court will issue ’ an amended judgment accordingly.

I. Time Warner Cable’s Motion for Judgment as a Matter of Law

A. Governing Standard

Judgment as a matter of law under Fed. R. Civ. P. 50(b) is improper “unless the proof is all one way or so overwhelmingly preponderant in favor of the movant' as to permit no other rational conclusion.” See Crumpacker v. Kansas, Dept. of Human Resources, 474 F.3d 747, 751 (10th Cir. 2007). In determining whether judgment as a matter of law is proper, a court may not weigh the evidence, consider the credibility of witnesses, or substitute its judgment for that of the jury. See Sims v. Great American Life Ins. Co., 469 F.3d 870, 891 (10th Cir. 2006). In essence, a court must affirm a-jury verdict if, viewing the record in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, the record contains evidence upon which the jury could properly return a verdict for the nonmoving party; See Bartee v. Michelin North America, Inc., 374 F.3d 906, 914 (10th Cir. 2004). Conversely, the court must enter judgment as a matter of law in favor of the moving party if “there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for the issue against that party." See Sims, 469 F.3d at 891.

B. Damages

1. Time Warner Cable requests judgment as a matter of law on Sprint’s claim for damages. .Time Warner Cable renews the “Catch-22” argument that it made in motions- at the close of Sprint’s case and after the submission of all evidence. The argument proceeds as follows: Sprint presented evidence of a reasonable royalty only through its damages expert, Dr. Mohan Rao, Dr. Rao declined to apportion damages among the patents at issue, based on his assumption (from Sprint’s technical expert, Dr. Stephen Wicker) that the patents were “blocking patents,” meaning that any VoIP-PSTN connection would infringe at least one of Sprint’s patents. Thus, Sprint -was required to prove the assumption that the [1139]*1139patents were blocking patents. If there was no such evidence, then there was no basis for Dr. Rao’s royalty opinion, and Sprint’s damages claim must fail. If, on the other hand, Sprint’s patents were blocking patents, then Time Warner Cable must also have infringed prior to the accused Go-It-Alone system, which was launched in 2010. In that .case, in which Time Warner Cable infringed going back as far as 2003, 2010 would not be an appropriate date for the hypothetical license negotiation that informs the royalty determination. Dr. Rao considered only a 2010 hypothetical negotiation; thus, if the use of that date was improper, Dr. Rao would have no royalty opinion. Either way, argues Time Warner Cable, Dr. Rao’s royalty opinion lacks support.

The Court concludes, however, that there is no Catch-22 here as argued by Time Warner Cable- The issue is whether there was sufficient evidence to support Dr. Rao’s assumption of blocking patents. In its answer to a special verdict interrogatory, the jury' found that Sprint had proved that the appropriate date for the hypothetical negotiation was 2010. The jury had been instructed (in an instruction that Time Warner Cable has not challenged) that “[a] reasonable royalty is the amount of royalty payment that [the parties] would have agreed to in a hypothetical negotiation taking place at a time prior to when the infringing use first began.” As the Court has previously noted, if the prior infringement was by a different product, the date of the hypothetical negotiation date would be at the start of the present infringement and not at the start of the prior infringement. See Sprint Communications Co. L.P. v. Comcast Cable Communications LLC, 225 F.Supp.3d 1233, 1253-54, 2016 WL 7079522, at *14 (D. Kan. Dec. 5, 2016) (Lungstrum, J.) (hereafter Daubert Order) (citing Fujifilm Corp. v. Motorola Mobility LLC, 2015 WL 1265009, at *3 (N.D. Cal. Mar. 19, 2015)). Time Warner Cable has not challenged the jury’s finding that 2010 was the appropriate negotiation date. Moreover, that finding is supported by evidence that Time Warner Cable’s Go-It-Alone product was a distinct product launched in 2010 that used differed equipment or architecture. Thus, the fact that the jury found 2010 to be the appropriate date for the hypothetical negotiation does not mean that Time Warner Cable’s, pre-2010 activities did or did not infringe Sprint’s patents. Indeed, as the Court noted at trial, there is no competent evidence from which the jury could have made such a determination, as neither party’s expert offered such an opinion concerning . Time Warner Cable’s pre-2010 products. Accordingly, the jury’s finding and Dr. Rao’s use of a 2010 date does not mean that the patents could not be blocking patents, which in turn means that Sprint’s- positions are not irreconcilable and there is no Catch-22.

Addressing the relevant question, the Court- concludes that there was evidence presented at trial to support Dr. Rao’s assumption that Sprint’s patents were blocking patents. As noted above, Dr. Rao relied on Dr. Wicker for that assumption, and Dr. Wicker testified that there were no non-infringing alternatives for Time Warner Cable’s system in 2010. Time Warner Cable argues that Dr. Wicker did not testify that there were no

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Bluebook (online)
255 F. Supp. 3d 1134, 2017 WL 2345639, 2017 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 81699, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sprint-communications-co-lp-v-time-warner-cable-inc-ksd-2017.