Jury orders Cisco to pay $70 million in patent case

US-CISCOSYSTEMS-VERDICT:Jury orders Cisco to pay $70 million in patent case

By Dan Levine and Erin Geiger Smith

(Reuters) - Cisco Systems Inc committed fraud against patent licensor XpertUniverse Inc in an intellectual property dispute, a jury found on Friday, ordering the networking company to pay $70 million in damages, according to court filings.

The verdict was delivered in a Delaware federal court.

"We are surprised and extremely disappointed with the jury's verdict," Cisco said in an emailed statement.

The company said it was "confident" its conduct was appropriate and would pursue an appeal if the judge leaves the verdict intact.

XpertUniverse developed a technology to help improve response time for customers seeking help from large organizations, which Cisco expressed an interest in commercializing, according to court filings.

However, XpertUniverse claimed that Cisco fraudulently induced it to share trade secrets and other intellectual property, with the promise that Cisco would not disclose them. But Cisco was filing several patent applications in its own name based on XpertUniverse's IP, the lawsuit said.

The jury also found on Friday that Cisco violated two XpertUniverse patents, and awarded an additional $34,000 in damages on those claims.

In a court filing this week, Cisco told U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews in Wilmington that "no evidence exists from which the jury could find in favor of XU on either its fraudulent concealment or patent claims."

XpertUniverse attorney Charles Cantine of Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP said the company was "obviously very happy" with the verdict.

The case in U.S. District Court, District of Delaware is XpertUniverse Inc. vs. Cisco Systems Inc., 09-157.

(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco and Erin Geiger Smith in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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