Patent licensing company (some might say troll) Forgent Networks Inc. lost a patent battle with EchoStar Communications Corp. after a jury in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Texas declared Forgent’s digital video processing patent invalid.

The legal loss shaved off a quarter of the patent firm’s market cap and illuminated how arbitrary the value of investments in patent licensing companies can be. Forgent sued 15 companies, and nine of them agreed to license the patent for a total of $20 million in royalty payments. EchoStar didn’t play ball, so Forgent took further legal action and sought $200 million in damages from the company. Considering that EchoStar’s competitor DirectTV Inc. paid a licensing fee of $8 million to Forgent, it’s hard to see how the $200 million was calculated. — Stacey Higginbotham

See story from The Austin Business Journal
See Forgent press release on trial results

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