Yesterday Cisco and Innovatio filed an Agreed Motion to Dismiss with Prejudice based on settlement of their litigation involving Innovatio WiFi standard essential patents.  Cisco’s Mark Chandler issued a statement indicating that the case settled for $2.7 million, or about 3.2 cents for 85 million devices even though Judge Holderman ruled that a RAND royalty would be about 10 cents per unit and Innovatio reportedly sought over $2,000 per location from each coffee shop, hotel or other end-user of the WiFi devices.  The settlement covers Cisco and all users of Cisco WiFi equipment.  It will be interesting to see if Cisco’s success here will also translate to its similar action against Rockstar–another non-practicing, non-innovating patent monetization entity asserting alleged standard essential patents against end-users of Cisco equipment (cable operators) (see our Feb. 3, 2014 post).

Recall that Motorola and SonicWall also settled with Innovatio following Judge Holderman’s RAND ruling (see our Jan. 2, 2014 post).  And a recent status conference filing indicates that remaining parties may be finalizing settlements with Innovatio. 

The settlements may keep Judge Holderman’s RAND analysis on the books without appellate review, leaving Judge Robart’s RAND analysis in Microsoft v. Motorola to be the first and only pending appeal for appellate guidance on a detailed RAND royalty rate methodology–a question remains whether that review will be by the Federal Circuit or Ninth Circuit (see our Dec. 16, 2013 post).  We say only appellate review of a “detailed RAND royalty rate methodology” because the Ericsson v. D-Link appeal pending before the Federal Circuit does involve review of a jury verdict damages award on Ericsson RAND-obligated WiFi patents–the jury awarded 15-cents per device for three WiFI SEPs where Ericsson had asked for 50-cents per device for all of its WiFi SEPs.  But the black-box nature of that jury verdict may not provide as good a vehicle for appellate guidance on a detailed RAND royalty-rate methodology as presented in Judge Robart’s detailed opinion (see our Aug. 7, 2013 post on Judge Davis’ review of the Ericsson v. D-Link jury verdict as well as our Dec. 23, 2013 and Jan. 7, 2014 posts on some of the appeal amicus filings).