MARSHALL, Texas – After a five-day trial, a federal jury awarded AZA’s client Anonymous Media Research Holdings the full $78,512,999 requested from Samsung Electronics Co. for infringing on two patents.
The jury in U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap’s Eastern District of Texas court heard how Samsung improperly used two Anonymous Media patents covering methods for improving automatic content recognition (ACR) to measure media consumption.
Lead lawyer Jason McManis, the head of AZA’s intellectual property section, said the verdict validates over 21 years of the company’s hard work and dedication. “Our clients stood up for their ideas, and the jury stood with them,” he said.
Mr. McManis told reporters that Anonymous Media was founded by inventors Jonathan Steuer and Chris Otto, “two guys who had some really good ideas and worked really hard to get patents on it, only to be faced with an industry giant like Samsung using that technology without permission.” He said Samsung started using the patented process for targeted advertising.
In the verdict form, jurors attributed 52 percent of the damages awarded to infringement of one patent, with 48 percent going to infringement of the second patent. The patents in the case are 10,719,848 and 10,963,911.
The AZA trial team included Weining Bai, Louis Liao, Chun Deng, Ab Henry, Michael Killingsworth, Sujeeth Rajavolu, and Hailey Pulman. Warren J. McCarty III of The McCarty Firm was also a key member of the trial team along with Andrea Fair of Miller, Fair, Henry.
The case was covered by media, including Texas Lawbook’s ”EDTX Jury Hits Samsung with $78.5M Verdict in Infringement Case,” Law360’s “Jury Says Samsung Owes $78.5M In Media Use Patent Case” and Bloomberg’s “Samsung Owes $78.5 Million in Media-Measurement Patent Suit.”
The case is Anonymous Media Research Holdings, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., et al. in the Eastern District of Texas case number 2:23-cv-00439.
AZA, or Ahmad, Zavitsanos & Mensing, is a Houston-based law firm that is home to true courtroom lawyers with a formidable track record in complex commercial litigation, including energy, healthcare, intellectual property and business dispute cases. AZA was recognized again by Chambers USA 2025 as among the best in Texas in commercial law and intellectual property; the firm has been listed by Best Lawyers’ Best Law Firms as one of the country’s best commercial litigation firms for 13 years; has been named Litigation Department of the Year by Texas Lawyer three times; and was dubbed a Texas Powerhouse law firm by Law360.