Tue, Nov 6, 2012 - Shares of Vringo Inc fell as much as 10 percent after the mobile phone software maker said a jury had asked five companies, including Google Inc, to pay about $30 million for infringing its patents.
Vringo had been looking for much higher compensation of at least $696 million from the companies, financial website iStockAnalyst had previously reported.The court-appointed jury upheld the validity of Vringo's patents and asked Google to pay $15.8 million, AOL $7.9 million, IAC/InterActiveCorp-owned IAC Search & Media $6.6 million and Gannett Co Inc $4.3 million, Vringo said.
Vringo inherited the lawsuit after it acquired Innovate/Protect (I/P), a company which specializes in monetizing intellectual property, in March.
I/P had filed a patent infringement lawsuit against AOL, Google, IAC, Gannett and Target Corp in 2011.
The lawsuit against Google involves two patents that I/P bought from Lycos, one of the biggest search engines of the 90's.
After finding that the patent claims were both valid and infringed by Google, the jury found that reasonable royalty damages should be based on a "running royalty", and that the running royalty rate should be 3.5 percent, Vringo said.
Vringo shares were down 8 percent at $3.66 in late-afternoon trading on the American Stock Exchange.
