With trial to start Monday, Judge Posner dismissed the case with prejudice “because neither party can establish a right to relief.” The judge had just this week asked the parties to brief him as to the court’s ability to offer any relief if he granted summary judgment barring both injunctive and monetary relief in light of motions from both parties that the opposing party is unable to prove damages in light of his recent Daubert rulings (see 6/3/12 Order). Commentators have suggested that Posner was frustrated by the parties’ extremely disparate damages positions.
Indeed, in his recent Daubert ruling (5/22/12), Posner noted such disparities. More on this in later entries, but here’s an example: with one patent, Motorola’s damages expert Michael Wagner proposed a $100,000 reasonable royalty for one invention, while Apple’s expert Brian Napper proposed a $14 million royalty, a difference of 140x. Judge Posner noted that “the size of the disparity is a warning sign. Either one of the experts is way off base, or the estimation of a reasonable royalty is guesswork remote from the application of expert knowledge to a manageable issue within the scope of that knowledge.” The judge characterized Wagner’s work on this patent as surprisingly inadequate, and characterized Napper’s work as unreasonable, arbitrary, unverified, bizarre, and unsupportable. It’s an interesting and demanding Daubert ruling.
Apple, Inc. v. Motorola, Inc., et. al., 1-11-cv-08540 (N.D. IL, June 7, 2012, Order)(Posner)