A recent Thomson Reuter story, “Qualcomm Awarded $12.4M in Attorneys’ Fees in Patent Case,” reports that San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc. can recover its legal fees, $12.4 million, from a company whose claims of patent infringement and stolen trade secrets were thrown out.  U.S. District Judge Anthony Battaglia of San Diego ordered Gabriel Technologies Corp, which owes a portfolio of patents, must pay nearly all attorneys’ fees that Qualcomm incurred in the case.

In the underlying case, Gabriel Technologies Corp v. Qualcomm Inc, Gabriel Technologies sued Qualcomm, the world’s leading supplier of chips for cellphones, in October 2008 over patents related to global positioning system tracking devices.  Gabriel sought $1 billion in damages.  Gabriel’s claims were entirely baseless and it could not have expected to succeed on any of them, the judge said in a written order.  “Several emails between Gabriel’s employees and former employees…suggest that plaintiffs knew they lacked the requisite evidence and opted to pursue their claims nonetheless,” Battaglia wrote.

In its fee petition, Qualcomm also asked that Gabriel’s local counsel, Wang Hartman Gibbs & Cauley, be forced to contribute to any fee award.  The court ordered Wang Hartman to pay $64,000, the amount it billed Gabriel in the case.  That amount “should deter local counsel from filing documents without performing a reasonable inquiry under the circumstances,” the judge said.