Wins

Multimillion-Dollar Jury Verdict for Texas Instruments

On Monday, February 6, 2006, on behalf of clients Texas Instruments, Inc. (TI) and Stanford University, Heller Ehrman was victorious in GlobespanVirata v. Texas Instruments and Stanford University.  The case was centered on high-speed DSL modem technology.

Since 1998, GlobespanVirata has sold chipsets for use in DSL modems but refused to take a license to TI and Stanford's DSL patents (as most major DSL chipset manufacturers have done). GlobespanVirata sued TI and Stanford in 2003, alleging that TI's licensing offers violate various antitrust laws and also asserting that TI and Stanford's DSL patents were invalid and not infringed. TI countersued, claiming that GlobespanVirata infringed three key DSL patents. The Court bifurcated the case, and the patent claims went to trial. 

After a month-long jury trial in the District Court of New Jersey, the jury found that Globespan infringed every asserted claim of all three patents, upheld the validity of all three patents and awarded TI a total of $112 million in damages: $70 million in lost profits and $42 million in reasonable royalties. Since the jury found that Globespan's infringement was willful, the Court can potentially increase these damages.

TI also has a pending claim for reformation of a license agreement with Globespan's parent company, Conexant Systems, Inc., and the Court has also taken Globespan's inequitable conduct allegations under submission.

Win for QUALCOMM

After six years of litigation, we recently prevailed in the last of a series of motions for summary adjudication. These motions were related to the transfer of QUALCOMM employees to Ericsson as part of QUALCOMM's 1999 sale of its Infrastructure Division to Ericsson. With a few exceptions, each of the more than 1,000 employees transferred signed QUALCOMM releases in exchange for receiving retention bonus payments (RBP) and agreeing to work for Ericsson. After accepting the RBP payments, the employees sued, seeking accelerated vesting of 100 percent of their unvested stock options, claiming the infrastructure sale constituted a Change in Control under the terms of the Stock Option Plan. The initial class action included approximately 1,000 employees and was followed by approximately 120 class action opt-outs. A $1 billion class-action damages claim settled for approximately one cent on the dollar, primarily to the small number of employees who did not sign the release. As for the class action opt-outs, the plaintiffs' claims were dismissed. To avoid an appeal, the opt-outs' $200 million claim was settled for $250,000.

A Campaign Finance Reform Victory in All Respects

On July 15, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed a district court decision invalidating a host of regulations promulgated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that undermine the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), the so-called "McCain-Feingold" law. Since mid-2002, we have led a multi-firm pro bono coalition representing Congressmen Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) and Martin Meehan (D-Mass.) in their challenge to the FEC.   Our clients, the House co-sponsors of BCRA, successfully argued that the FEC undermined the reform legislation by promulgating narrow definitions of key terms, failing to plug various loopholes that Congress intended to close and opening up new avenues for circumvention. This was a sweeping victory, with the court of appeals affirming our victory in the district court "in all respects." The court noted the importance of "faithfully implementing the statute Congress has passed" and agreed that "if regulatory safe harbors permit what BCRA bans, we have no doubt that savvy campaign operators will exploit them to the hilt, reopening the very soft money floodgates BCRA aimed to close."

Victory for Pacific Gas and Electric Company

On behalf of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), we have been working since 2000 to uncover the causes of the 2000-2001 California electric crisis and to obtain compensation from various electric and gas suppliers.  Heller Ehrman, in conjunction with lawyers for other California utilities and state agencies, has been leading the efforts at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the District of Columbia and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the Enron bankruptcy court to obtain recoveries from Enron and others. On July 15, 2005, a deal was inked with Enron providing a nominal compensation of over $1.5 billion from Enron to California. Due to Enron's bankruptcy, not all of this award will be recoverable, but the expected real cash value of the settlement will exceed $300 million. This follows on the heels of other settlements with suppliers El Paso Energy, Duke, Williams, Dynegy and Mirant that had collectively recovered over $2 billion for the crisis.