Conexant Wins $250,000 in ‘Exceptional’ Patent Case

Conexant Systems Inc. said Thursday that a federal judge in Northern California has awarded it $250,000 in sanctions against a company that had sued it on a patent infringement claim and lost.

The Newport Beach communications chip maker said in a press release that U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel granted Conexant’s motion to declare the suit filed by Klaus Holtz and his company, Omni Dimensional Networks, an exceptional case under federal law and subject to sanctions.

Last fall, the judge had thrown the case out, finding that Conexant had not violated Holtz’s modem technology patent. But the case really was decided a year earlier when Fogel issued a ruling interpreting the claims of the patent against Holtz.

In ordering the sanctions, the judge ruled that after that 1998 ruling on interpreting the patent, “no person with plaintiff’s degree of scientific sophistication could have believed he still had a chance of prevailing on his infringement claims.”