Fair Isaac’s trial against Experian, Transunion, and Equifax (the credit-reporting agencies that went in on a venture to have another consumer credit-worthiness scoring system other than Fair Isaac’s “FICO score), and against others (e.g., Vantage Score, the referenced “venture”), did not go well for Fair Isaac. U.S. District Court Judge Ann Montgomery (D. Minn.) in today’s ruling: “[T]he jury’s verdict was a wholesale, unambiguous rejection of Fair Isaac’s central theory of the case…”
The case has been repeatedly discussed on Minnesota Litigator (previous posts: here).
Fair Isaac lost the jury trial part of the case and fared no better at the bench trial and now, Judge Montgomery has ruled on the parties’ post-judgment motions.
The jury found that Fair Isaac had perpetrated a fraud on the Patent and Trademark Office. Judge Montgomery found that this jury’s decision was supported by evidence.
Fair Isaac challenged the Court’s rulings on “licensee estoppel” and several other of her trademark law-specific rulings. The Court ruled that the doctrine might serve to estop licensees, but would not estop claims by defendant Vantage Score, which was not a licensee. The Court rejected all of Fair Isaac’s additional trademark law-specific challenges, as well.
Defendants also sought some post-trial relief in the form of a motion to amend the judgment to cancel Fair Isaac’s trademark. As at trial, they were more persuasive than Fair Isaac apparently in the post-judgment briefing and prevailed on that motion. They also sought attorneys fees and, again, here, they were successful in part.
Defendants were unsuccessful in getting the case categorized as an “exceptional case” wherein all fees would have been borne by Fair Isaac. The Court’s opinion discusses the armies of lawyers involved in this case so the denial of this motion has to have been a something of a relief to Fair Isaac (though clearly this, and everything else, will be revisited before the Eighth Circuit).