Meta must pay $175M for patent-infringing livestreaming tech, judge says
Enlarge (credit: SOPA Images / Contributor | LightRocket)
After a jury unanimously decided last September that Meta owed $175 million to walkie-talkie app-maker Voxer for patent infringement, Meta tried to avoid paying up by requesting a judge either reject the jury's verdict or give Meta a new trial. This week, a federal judge denied Meta's request, making it likely that Meta will have to pay all those running royalties for illegally copying Voxer's technology and using it to launch Facebook Live and Instagram Live.
Meta had argued seemingly everything it could to get out of paying millions in damages. It questioned whether the jury's decision was reasonable, claiming that Voxer's lawyer had made comments that biased the jury. In Meta's view, no reasonable jury would have found that Meta infringed Voxer's patented video-streaming and messaging technologies. Further, even if everyone agreed that there was infringement, Meta argued that the damages were too extreme and improperly calculated by Voxer's expert. Instead of owing running royalties, Meta felt it should be required to pay either no damages or a lump sum.
In his decision, US District Judge Lee Yeakel affirmed that substantial evidence supported the jury's verdict of patent infringement and sufficient evidence supported the damages that the jury awarded Voxer.