A recent Law 360 story by Henrik Nilsson, “Amazon Lands Another $2.5M in Fees in Personal Web IP Fight”, reports that a California federal judge awarded Amazon $2.3 million in attorney fees plus another $193,000 in court costs in a patent feud with licensing outfit PersonalWeb, adding to an already more than $5 million fee award, while slamming PersonalWeb's "disgraceful" litigation tactics.
U.S. District Judge Beth L. Freeman granted and denied in part Amazon's motion for supplemental fees in the infringement litigation lodged against it and its various customers by PersonalWeb Technologies LLC, whose allegations over patented cloud-computing technology were ultimately found to be "objectively baseless" in 2020.
"The court notes with grave displeasure that the overriding theme of PersonalWeb's post-judgment conduct has been one of bad-faith evasion of the court's judgment and abuse of due process protections," Judge Freeman wrote her order. "PersonalWeb's two-track strategy of attempting to avoid this court's jurisdiction, has been disgraceful, and as clear an example of bad faith as any that this court has had the displeasure of observing from the bench."
Judge Freeman saddled PersonalWeb with what was initially $4.6 million in fees in 2021, owed to Amazon's lawyers at Fenwick & West LLP for billing more than 9,260 hours of work on PersonalWeb-related litigation. Amid appeal, the number has since ballooned to about $5.2 million, which a split Federal Circuit panel upheld Nov. 3.
Amazon said in May that it's entitled to $3.2 million worth of extra fees for work performed between March 2021 and March 2023, which it partly attributed to related Federal Circuit appeals over claim construction, non-infringement and the previous fee award. In addition, Amazon argued that it incurred fees "attempting to secure or enforce the fee award." The company later revised that number and asked for almost $3 million in fees and costs. Judge Freeman said Amazon was entitled to approximately $2.5 million.
The sprawling litigation goes back to early 2018, when PersonalWeb filed around 50 patent suits in a handful of jurisdictions against Amazon Web Services customers, including Airbnb Inc., MyFitnessPal Inc., Reddit Inc., Venmo Inc., Kickstarter, Blue Apron LLC and FanDuel Inc. But Amazon fired off its own suit in February 2018 arguing PersonalWeb had already lost its case against its customers when it dropped claims against Amazon itself in prior litigation. A California federal court sided with Amazon in 2019, and the Federal Circuit upheld that decision in June 2020 in a precedential decision.
Judge Freeman approved Amazon's initial request for attorney fees in October 2020, calling the litigation "objectively baseless." The judge declined to determine the amount at that time, but deemed the case "exceptional." During a hearing on attorney fees in November, Judge Freeman expressed her frustration with the lengthy litigation, noting that she doesn't "really know what to say," and she's been ruling consistently in favor of Amazon for years, and so far "the Federal Circuit has agreed with me every step of the way."
Throughout the hearing, Judge Freeman criticized PersonalWeb's litigation tactics and its purported attempts to dodge judgment and fee payment by filing appeals and replacing counsel repeatedly, as well as filing a receivership action in state court and obtaining an injunction barring the company from having to meet certain deadlines to pay in the patent infringement cases.
Among the attorney fees awarded to Amazon include approximately $1.1 million for 1,931 hours of work in post-judgment enforcement matters in federal court from March 2021 to March 2023. Judge Freeman awarded another $562,068 for about 776 hours of work in state court proceedings and $209,582 related to PersonalWeb's petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court following the Federal Circuit's decision in 2020. The high court denied the petition.