Shares of Vringo fell as much as 10% after the mobile phone software maker said a jury had asked five companies, including Google, to pay about $30 million for infringing its patents.
Vringo had been looking for much higher compensation of at least $696 million from the companies, financial Web site iStockAnalyst had previously reported. The court-appointed jury upheld the validity of Vringo's patents and asked Google to pay $15.8 million, AOL $7.9 million, IAC/InterActiveCorp-owned IAC Search & Media $6.6 million, and Gannett $4.3 million, Vringo said.
Vringo inherited the lawsuit after it acquired Innovate/Protect (I/P), a company which specialises in monetising intellectual property, in March. I/P had filed a patent infringement lawsuit against AOL, Google, IAC, Gannett and Target in 2011.
The lawsuit against Google involves two patents that I/P bought from Lycos, one of the biggest search engines of the 1990s.
After finding that the patent claims were both valid and infringed by Google, the jury found reasonable royalty damages should be based on a "running royalty", and that the running royalty rate should be 3.5%, Vringo said.
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