Top Plaintiffs' Verdict by Impact: Synopsys Inc. v. ATopTech Inc.

With the assistance of Jones Day, Synopsys Inc. won a $30.4 million verdict against ATopTech Inc. last March, following a three-week copyright infringement trial in Oakland.

The original complaint filed by Mountain View-based Synopsys alleged that ATopTech had infringed its PrimeTime product by using patented software and a copyright-protected command set.

Jones Day successfully moved to first present the copyright claims to jurors and set aside the patent claims and ATopTech's antitrust counterclaims for later proceedings.

Patrick T. Michael, a San Francisco-based Jones Day partner, said the move allowed his team to focus the jury's attention solely on the command set, a list of names and syntax of commands and variables laid out in Synopsys' products and manuals.

Jones Day was then able to more effectively explain the dense technology to jurors, according to Michael. Synopsys Inc. v. ATopTech Inc., 13-CV02965 (N.D. Cal., filed June 2013).

"It shows copyright protection is a valuable avenue [intellectual property] companies should be looking at," Michael said.

Lawyers for Santa Clara-based ATopTech requested a bench trial to argue that Synopsys was legally barred from bringing copyright claims.

ATopTech's legal team at Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP alleged that Synopsys encouraged the use of its command sets in seminars and forums at the time ATopTech was developing the product in question.

Mittelstaedt	Schwartz

U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney ruled in October that ATopTech failed to demonstrate that Synopsys was barred from pursuing copyright infringement claims.

All proceedings in the case, including the patent infringement jury trial, have been stayed due to ATopTech's Jan. 13 bankruptcy filing.

? Paula Lehman-Ewing