In dribs and drabs, Vringo Inc.’s November 2012 patent infringement verdict against Google Inc. has ballooned into one of the largest in years. The licensing company may have landed the knockout punch on Tuesday, when a judge awarded it a slice of Google’s future revenue from the online advertising platform AdWords.
In an eight-page decision, U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson in Alexandria, Va., ordered Google to pay Vringo a 1.36 percent royalty on its U.S.–based AdWords revenue. Google still hasn’t revealed the size of that revenue, and it remains unclear when the royalty period will end, so Google’s exact liability isn’t yet clear. But the company may be on the hook for more than $600 million, for reasons we’ll explain. And that comes on top of $48 million Google was already ordered to pay for past infringement of Vringo’s search engine patents.
