Jury awards Informatica $25m

Informatica has been awarded $25m by a jury in the San Francisco federal court following a patent infringement case against a subsidiary of Business Objects.

The award was based on the finding that Business Objects has wilfully infringed on two Informatica patents in selling its Data Integrator product.

Informatica filed the suit against Business Objects in July 2002 asserting that the ActaWorks product (now sold by Business Objects as Data Integrator), infringes several Informatica patents including US patent numbers 6,014,670 and 6,339,775, both titled "Apparatus and Method for Performing Data Transformations in Data Warehousing."

On March 28, 2007, as part of these proceedings, the judge determined that Business Objects and customers' use of the Data Integrator product infringes on Informatica's patents.

Yesterday, a jury unanimously determined that the patents are valid and that Business Objects' infringement on Informatica's patents was done wilfully. The jury found a reasonable royalty for Business Objects' infringement to be $25m. The jury's determination that Business Objects' infringement was wilful allows the judge to increase this royalty damages award up to three times the amount agreed upon by the jury.