Nixed Award Over Judge’s Wife’s Cisco Stock Appealed to Justices

Centripetal Networks Inc. is asking the US Supreme Court to overturn a Federal Circuit decision that wiped out its $1.9 billion patent infringement verdict against Cisco Systems Inc. over a judge’s failure to recuse himself.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in June threw out Centripetal’s award after finding that Henry C. Morgan, the late district judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, should’ve recused himself from the case after learning his wife owned 100 shares of Cisco stock while in the process of writing the judgment.

That ruling came amid a push to make federal ...