Sophos Loses Patent Infringement Lawsuit, To Pay $15M To Finjan Holdings

Sophos must pay $15 million to Finjan Holdings after a jury ruling Thursday found that the security vendor had infringed on five of the company’s patents.

In the lawsuit, Finjan Holdings, an East Palo Alto, Calif.-based company that holds patents to many enterprise security solutions, said Sophos had infringed on five of its patents with its Unified Threat Management gateway, endpoint security and cloud-based Live Protection security offering.

The jury found unanimously that Sophos did infringe on the patents, although not willfully, and must pay $15 million to Finjan. The patents involved were U.S. Patent Nos. 6,154,844, 8,677,494, 6,804,780, 7,613,926, and the 8,141,154.

[Related: CRN Exclusive: Sophos CEO On One Year As Public Company And The Growing Endpoint Market]

"We are grateful for the time and energy each juror took to arrive at the verdict. … Finjan's patents cover highly relevant cybersecurity technologies needed in today's cyberworld, and were developed internally years ago. … At Finjan, we remain committed to our licensing best practices and will continue to present our patent infringement claims transparently to establish the merits of our case,’ said Julie Mar-Spinola, Finjan Holdings' chief intellectual property officer and vice president, legal, in a statement about the verdict.

Sophos said in a statement on the ruling that it ’represents the next step in an ongoing legal process and Sophos is considering all options including an appeal of the verdict.’ Sophos declined to comment further on the ruling.

Finjan Holdings has won multiple patent verdicts in recent months, including a $39.5 million ruling against Blue Coat Systems in August 2015 and a $10.9 million patent settlement with Proofpoint in June 2016. It currently has similar lawsuits pending against FireEye, Symantec, Palo Alto Networks, Blue Coat Systems and ESET, the company said.

Sam Heard, president of Lakeland, Fla.-based Data Integrity Services, said he was not worried by the ruling and did not expect it to impact his business or long-standing partnership with Sophos.

’The news has no impact on my business and we will continue to value our relationship with Sophos. I have a tremendous amount of trust in Sophos and will believe that they will always do the right thing,’ Heard said.