IBM Wins $83 Million From Groupon in E-Commerce Patents Case (1)

A U.S. jury awarded International Business Machines Corp. $83.5 million after finding that Groupon Inc. infringed four of its e-commerce patents.

The July 27 verdict cements the prowess of IBM’s portfolio of more than 45,000 patents and is a boon to its intellectual-property licensing revenue, which brought in $1.19 billion in 2017.

The jury in Wilmington, Del., sided with the argument of IBM’s lawyers, who had said Groupon was trying to portray IBM as claiming to have patented the internet and had called that effort “a smoke screen.”

As they began the trial, IBM’s lawyers said Groupon built its online ...