EscapeX IP, LLC c. Google LLC, Appeal No. 2024-1201 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 25, 2025)

Our Case of the Week concerns an attorney fee award in a lawsuit filed by non-practicing entity EscapeX against Google.  Following various forms of exceptional conduct, the Court awarded fees, and then further awarded fees against the attorneys pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1927 based on their conduct in briefing the fees issues.

This case falls into a line of cases where the facts are so amusing (and exceptional) that the earnest reader with a few minutes to spare would be advised to read the entire 14-page opinion.

EscapeX sued Google in Texas, asserting that Google’s YouTube Music product infringed its ’113 patent.  Google initially responded to the suit by sending a letter to EscapeX, stating, among other things, that EscapeX could not have conducted an adequate pre-suit investigation, since the features accused of infringing the ’113 patent were not present in the accused YouTube Music product. EscapeX then filed an amended complaint in which it changed the accused product to YouTube Video with Auto-Add.  Google responded in several subsequent letters, stating that internet searches would have revealed that this accused product existed before the priority date of the ’113 patent – meaning that if it infringed the ’113 patent then it also anticipated and invalidated it.  EscapeX did not respond to Google’s request that EscapeX voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit.  In other correspondence, Google informed EscapeX that Google planned to file a motion to transfer the action to the Northern District of California and again requested confirmation that EscapeX would dismiss the case.  Again EscapeX did not respond.  Google then filed its transfer motion and supporting brief. When EscapeX failed to file a response, the district court noted EscapeX’s “troublesome” and “repeated failure to file in a timely manner” and granted Google’s motion and transferred the case.

Shortly thereafter, in a separate case in which EscapeX was asserting the same ’113 patent, a judge in the Southern District of New York found all claims of the ’113 invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 101. EscapeX did not appeal this ruling.

After Google again asked EscapeX to dismiss its suit, EscapeX filed what purported to be a “joint stipulation of dismissal,” which represented that the parties “jointly stipulate to the dismissal of this action” and “further jointly stipulate and agree that each party shall bear its own costs, expenses, and attorneys’ fees.”  EscapeX’s attorney attested in the stipulation that “concurrence in the filing of this document has been obtained from [Google’s] counsel.”   In fact, however, EscapeX had not shared the stipulation with Google before its filing, and had not obtained Google’s consent to file it.

EscapeX withdrew the stipulation and, several days later, with Google’s consent, filed a second “joint stipulation of dismissal,” which made no representation that the parties had agreed to bear their own fees.  Google then moved for attorneys’ fees under 35 U.S.C. § 285.  The district court granted Google’s motion and ordered EscapeX to pay $191,302.18 to Google for attorneys’ fees and costs it had incurred in the course of this case.

EscapeX subsequently moved, pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 59(e), to amend the judgment, “based on newly discovered evidence” EscapeX asserted had been unavailable at the time of the district court’s order granting attorneys’ fees.  The “new evidence” consisted of two short declarations: one from EscapeX’s president and the other from an engineer who had performed EscapeX’s pre-suit investigation and prepared the claim charts that were attached to its amended complaint.  These declarations, according to EscapeX, showed that “meticulous steps were undertaken” prior to filing suit.  Google sought to meet and confer with EscapeX before going to the expense of briefing its response to EscapeX’s Rule 59(e) motion, which Google viewed as frivolous and had asked EscapeX to withdraw.  Despite several followups, EscapeX did not respond until weeks later, by which time Google had already had to file its response to the motion.  In that response, Google argued that the declarations violated a court order (that had rejected EscapeX’s request for leave to file a declaration in opposition to Google’s motion for attorneys’ fees) and, in any event, they did not comprise “newly discovered evidence.”   The district court agreed.  Finding that EscapeX “wholly failed to meet the Rule 59(e) standard for amending a judgment,” it denied the motion.

Google then moved under 28 U.S.C. § 1927, 35 U.S.C. § 285, and the court’s inherent powers to recover the fees and costs it incurred in opposing EscapeX’s Rule 59(e) motion.  The district court granted Google’s motion, awarding an additional $63,525.30 in attorneys’ fees and costs, and held that EscapeX and its attorneys were jointly and severally liable for this amount.

EscapeX appealed.  The Federal Circuit affirmed.  The opinion is far less exceptional than the facts.  As to the motion brought under Section 285, the Court found no abuse of discretion by the district court after finding it “obvious that EscapeX conducted no serious pre-suit investigation and that this case was frivolous from the start.”  As to the denial of the Rule 59 motion, the Court affirmed that the district court properly excluded the declarations because they did not constitute “newly discovered evidence.”  And as to the Section 1927 attorney fee award, the Federal Circuit affirmed because the “Rule 59(e) motion was frivolous.”

The opinion can be found here.

By Nika Aldrich

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Akamai Technologies, Inc. v. MediaPointe, Inc., Appeal No. 2024-1571 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 25, 2025)

In an infringement case concerning streaming media content over the internet to geographically dispersed users, the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of non-infringement.  In so ruling, the Court explained that when a claim term has not been expressly construed, the jury is allowed to give that term any reasonable meaning consistent with how a skilled artisan would understand it in context.  This means that summary judgment is inappropriate if the nonmovant can point to a reasonable interpretation under which infringement could be found.  Here, certain terms could not be reasonably interpreted in the manner MediaPointe urged, meaning there was no reasonable construction a jury could adopt that would create a factual dispute.  As a result, even with expert testimony included, the district court properly resolved the issue on summary judgment without sending it to the jury.  The Federal Circuit also reviewed the lower court’s indefiniteness ruling as to certain claims, affirming that use of the terms “optimal” and “best” rendered those claims indefinite where the patents provided no guidance on how such terms were to be applied.

The opinion can be found here.

By Jason Evans

This article summarizes aspects of the law and does not constitute legal advice. For legal advice with regard to your situation, you should contact an attorney.