US Court of Appeals rules that Cisco did not infringe on Commil's Wi-Fi patents, overturning $64M lower court verdict
Context & Ripple Effects
This ruling closes a loop that opened in May 2015, when the Supreme Court rejected Cisco's argument that its belief a patent was invalid could serve as a defense against willful-infringement liability. With that route blocked, the appeals court has now cut off the other one entirely — finding no infringement of Commil's Wi-Fi patents at all and erasing the $64M award outright.
The decision lands in an appellate environment where large tech-patent verdicts have proven fragile: courts have since tossed a $120M Samsung verdict over slide-to-unlock patents, thrown out Apple's $300M Optis wireless award, and Cisco itself later faced a far larger $1.9B Centripetal Networks judgment it vowed to appeal.
First-order effects
- Commil loses the entire $64M recovery from Cisco, with the case ending not on damages but on non-infringement — the strongest possible outcome for the defendant.
- Cisco exits the Commil litigation without payment, vindicating its decision to fight through the Supreme Court loss rather than settle.
Second-order effects
- Patent holders weighing suits against Cisco see two data points pointing the same way: even a Supreme Court win on defense theory didn't preserve Commil's payout, while Cisco's own later exposure to Centripetal shows the company will litigate billion-dollar verdicts to the end.
- Non-practicing patent owners face rising odds that multi-million-dollar jury wins get reversed on appeal, strengthening the hand of accused infringers in pre-trial settlement negotiations.
Third-order effects
- If appellate courts keep unwinding large tech-patent awards after trial — as they did here, with Samsung, and with Apple/Optis — the effective value of a jury verdict shrinks relative to what can be negotiated before filing, pushing wireless-standard patent enforcement toward earlier settlements and away from courtroom gambles.
The trend: Large jury verdicts in US tech-patent disputes are increasingly provisional until appellate review runs its course, tilting negotiating leverage toward deep-pocketed defendants like Cisco.