Cisco Defeats Patent Suit After $2.75 Billion Judgment Axed (1)

Cisco Systems Inc. network security products don’t infringe a set of patents that could’ve cost the company billions of dollars, a Virginia federal judge ruled.

Now-deceased Judge Henry Coke Morgan Jr. had ruled in an October 2020 bench trial that Cisco used technology described in four patents belonging to Northern Virginia-based Centripetal Networks LLC. He ruled Cisco owed the company $1.9 billion in damages, plus royalties amounting to more than $2.7 billion.

Morgan’s rulings were set aside by the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which held that the judge should’ve recused himself after learning that his wife ...