Ribbon Communications, a global leader in secure and intelligent cloud communications, announced that its wholly owned subsidiary filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Metaswitch in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. This lawsuit seeks enhanced damages for Metaswitch’s continued infringement of seven Ribbon patents (from Ribbon subsidiary GENBAND) that Metaswitch has already been found to infringe in an earlier lawsuit.
The lawsuit filed also seeks damages resulting from Metaswitch’s false and misleading statements to the market regarding the earlier suit.
Today’s lawsuit follows the March 22, 2018 entry of Final Judgment, in the earlier suit, in which the Court confirmed a jury’s verdict upholding the validity of Ribbon’s patents and finding that Metaswitch products infringe. The infringing products include Metaswitch’s Session Border Controllers, Softswitches, Call Feature Servers, Gateways and MTAS platform.
In the Final Judgment, the Court awarded Ribbon $8.9M plus interest (to cover a two-year period of past infringement) and awarded $368,046 in costs to Ribbon as the prevailing party. The Court also ordered Metaswitch to pay additional royalties and set the rates to apply for another two-year period of past infringement during which Metaswitch continued to sell infringing products.
In the suit filed today, Ribbon seeks damages for Metaswitch’s continued infringement for its allegedly “redesigned” products. Ribbon contends that those products still infringe and seeks a finding that Metaswitch’s infringement is willful. Consistent with the court’s ruling in the earlier case that the royalty rate should be increased for ongoing infringement, Ribbon will seek damages at a higher rate in this new suit, and Ribbon will seek additional enhancement of those damages based on the willful nature of the infringement. This suit also seeks damages for Metaswitch’s false and misleading statements regarding those “redesigned” products and the nature of the Court’s ruling regarding whether those products infringe.
In addition to the suit filed today, Ribbon recently filed two other patent infringement suits against Metaswitch asserting ten additional patents. These ten patents originate from Ribbon subsidiary Sonus who, like GENBAND, was an early and frequent innovator.
Finally, Ribbon looks forward to a trial in November 2018 on its claims alleging a widespread pattern of misappropriation of GENBAND trade secrets by Metaswitch.