Source: Law 360

More than 62 million dollars will have to be paid by Avery Dennison company, as a result of violating an inventor’s patent belonging to Clarke McAllister’s company ADASA Inc., the Oregon federal jury ruled.

The complainant company since 2017 alleged infringement of US patent No. 9,798,967, which covers systems for RFID, whose function is to help an item to be tracked electronically all over the distribution chain.

It is important to note that, according to the lawsuit, the patent improved on previous methods that did not ensure that tracking a product was “unique worldwide without the need for real-time access to a central database,” among other improvements.

In previous disputes, the jury found that a line of the labels of the world leader in adhesive technologies infringes the Patent Law, both literally and under the doctrine of equivalents, which is why it must cover past infringements based on a fee (royalties).

Federal judge Mustafa T. Kasubhai was in charge of issuing the order, where he specified that the multinational manufacturer owes a total of $62,407,801.50 of which $20 million will be used to pay penalties, $9.4 million in damages that were linked to “additional infringing labels” that Avery Dennison had discovered after the jury’s verdict in May.

The figure also includes pre-trial interest and assessed costs, as well as attorney’s fees.

For his part, Jonathan Suder, ADASA lawyer, said in a statement that the US legal system is sometimes put to the test, which requires dedication and perseverance to the rule of law.

In this context, the legal representative said literally: “We, as lawyers, are forced to trust and believe in the process and, when we do, the system works. The respect that must exist for inventors whether they are big or small” .