TORONTO
,
Dec. 4
/CNW/ -
"... (M)y pop told me, boy, if you fall down -- he was a rice farmer -- he said, if you fall down in the rice field or you fall down on the football field or you get knocked down, get up. You don't blame other people for it. You don't look for excuses." With these words in his opening statement,
Craig Tyler
, lead lawyer representing computer giant Dell, Inc., exhorted the jury in the small town of Marshall, Texas to side with his company, and not the Plaintiff, Mass Engineered Design Inc., a small product development company based in
Toronto
, Ontario. In the end, however, in
November 2008
, the jury in this patent infringement lawsuit decided that Dell and three other defendants (Ergotron, Tech Data & CDW) owed Mass a multi-million dollar award in damages for patent infringement. In addition, the judge issued an injunction prohibiting future sales of infringing products.
Years earlier, Mass and its President, Jerry Moscovitch, filed a lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas claiming that Dell, Ergotron, Tech Data and CDW had infringed
Mr. Moscovitch
's patent directed to multi-monitor display systems--systems designed to support more than one computer monitor. In the mid-90's,
Mr. Moscovitch
foresaw that multi-monitor display systems would increasingly supplant the common single monitor. He invented and sought patents for several such display systems. One patent - U.S. Patent No. RE36,978 - was the one considered by the Texas jury after 28 months of mediations, depositions, discovery, court testimony, expert reports and other legal wrangling that kept lawyers gainfully employed.
"We are a small company, but what we lack in size we make up in brain power," stresses
Mr. Moscovitch
. "For a company like ours that relies on innovation, our intellectual property is vital. We faced some enormous obstacles, but with our Director of Intellectual Property, Allan Tameshtit, and our team of lawyers, we successfully navigated a difficult landscape and demonstrated that sometimes the little guy wins."
In
June 2009
, on the eve of the appeal deadline, the parties reached a settlement that averted an appeal that often follows an initial judgment.
Mr. Moscovitch
is quick to point out that the settlement preserves the damages amount awarded by the Court and stipulates that all aspects of the judgment related to his patent remain binding and in force. Mass can now move forward with its plans of selling its multi-monitor display systems to a wider audience of business and creative users, and of introducing additional innovative systems for computers.
About Mass Engineered Design Inc.:
Mass EDI is a small product development company specializing in multi-monitor systems for the financial, insurance and engineering industries and for any other applications where users benefit from viewing two or more monitors while using a computer.
For more information, please visit Mass EDI at www.massedi.com
For further information: Allan Tameshtit, Director of Intellectual Property, Phone: (647) 258-3151 ext.236, Email: [email protected]
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