On March 24, 2025, United States Magistrate Judge Valerie Figueredo granted-in-part Defendant Google LLC’s (“Google”) motion for sanctions, attorney’s fees, and costs against Plaintiff EscapeX IP, LLC (“EscapeX”) and its counsel (the “Ramey Firm”), pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1927 and the court’s inherent power.
On December 13, 2023, EscapeX sued Google in the Southern District of New York, asserting that Google’s “Super Chat”—a social media product— infringes U.S. Patent No. 10,474,687 (“the ’687 patent”). EscapeX also alleged that Google “knew of the technology that would later underly the ’687 patent” since March 22, 2016, when, allegedly, EscapeX gave Google’s subsidiary, YouTube, a White Paper that included detailed descriptions of EscapeX’s patent portfolio and referenced the ’687 patent by its patent number.
On February 12, 2024, Google’s counsel wrote to the Ramey Firm, stating that: 1) while the claims of the ’687 patent require the number of user social media engagements to be unlimited or “ uncapped,” the number of user engagements in Super Chat are capped; and 2) the White Paper annexed to the complaint could not have been presented to [YouTube] at a March 2016 meeting because it references a patent that did not issue until November 2019. EscapeX disputed the statements in Google’s letter, who then filed a motion to dismiss. Two hours after Google filed its motion to dismiss, EscapeX voluntarily dismissed the case without prejudice. Google then filed a motion seeking attorney’s fees and costs against EscapeX and the Ramey Firm.
The Court found an attorney’s fee award against the Ramey Firm warranted for at least two reasons. First, the Court noted that the Ramey Firm did not, in the face of Google’s letter, “amend or dismiss the complaint, forcing [Google] to file a motion to dismiss.” The Court further noted that Super Chat’s capped engagements clearly did not infringe the ’687 patent’s requirement that engagements be “uncapped.” “Had Plaintiff’s counsel conducted a reasonable pre-suit investigation, [it] would have discovered that Super Chat could not infringe” the asserted claim of the ’687 patent. The Court rejected EscapeX’s argument that the meaning of “uncapped” is “an issue for a claim construction hearing,” instead finding that the term is neither ambiguous nor highly technical.
The Court then turned to the White Paper, stating that the Ramey Firm “had an independent basis to assure [itself] that [it] had a factual bases for the allegations in the complaint.” The Court also found that the Ramey Firm operated in bad faith in not dismissing or amending the complaint after Google made EscapeX aware of the deficiencies in the complaint in the February 12, 2024 letter. The Ramey Firm “multiplied the proceedings unnecessarily by forcing [Google] to expend time and money to file a motion to dismiss.” The Court also acknowledged that the Ramey Firm “has previously been sanctioned for litigation misconduct” at least seven times in four years. The Court agreed that the Ramey Firm “has a track record of commencing ‘frivolous suits’ against ‘tech giant[s]’ like Google.”
The case is EscapeX IP, LLC v. Google LLC, No. 23-cv-10839-VSB-VF (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 24, 2025)
