So begins a district court ruling in Good Technology v. MobileIron. The Court’s EMVR lesson in this July 10, 2015, order is as follows: when Dauberting an opposing damages expert for failing to fully apportion the patented product in his reasonable royalty opinion, you had better identify the unpatented features and show how the product should be apportioned.
Here, MobileIron’s expert, Richard Eichmann, identified one of Good’s products (the standalone AppCentral product, which is sold in larger product bundles) as having a close relation to the claimed functionality of the patent in suit. He then opines that the reasonable royalty would amount to the incremental profits from that product.
Good first argues that Eichmann should have further apportioned AppCentral, which the Court rejects because (1) “Good fails to offer any evidence or counter-opinion that AppCentral can be further apportioned,” and (2) “Good merely points fingers” instead of providing support about non-patented features. As support, the Court cites VirnetX: “a patentee must take care to seek only those damages attributable to the infringing features,” and the “law requires patentees to apportion the royalty down to a reasonable estimate of the value of its claimed technology, or else that its patented technology drove demand for the entire product.”
Good also argues that a royalty equal to 100% of the incremental profits is excessive. While the Court states that it is “skeptical” of this conclusion, it declines to exclude it, preferring to leave it to the jury.
Good Technology v. MobileIron, 5:12-cv-05826-PSG (N.D. CA, July 10, 2015, Order) (Grewal)