Google's Giant $1 Patent Victory

When Google reached a licensing agreement with Beneficial Innovations in 2010, it hoped the patent holding company’s lawsuits against the search engine’s customers would stop. Since 2007, Beneficial had targeted the Internet giant and several customers in lawsuits over patents relating to online gaming and advertising. Some of those sued included users of Google’s DoubleClick ad product.

Google paid to license the patents at issue in those cases on its own behalf as well as its users’. Even so, the legal assault by Beneficial, a so-called patent troll that files infringement suits in search of settlements, continued. So Google sued for breach of contract. On Jan. 23 a jury in Marshall, Tex., agreed with the Mountain View (Calif.)-based company that the terms of the 2010 deal had been breached. The nominal damages—$1—were more than enough in this case, since Google’s real objective was to enforce the terms of the deal and not back down.