--- title: "Jury Slams Patent Troll With $159K Verdict Over Bad Faith" meta: "og:description": "Jury awards gaming giant $159,457 after finding patent owner and attorneys made bad-faith infringement threats on already-licensed patents in Washington." "og:title": "Jury Slams Patent Troll With $159K Verdict Over Bad Faith" description: "Jury awards gaming giant $159,457 after finding patent owner and attorneys made bad-faith infringement threats on already-licensed patents in Washington." --- April 9, 2026 # **Jury Slams Patent Troll With $159K Verdict Over Bad Faith** Jury awards gaming giant $159,457 after finding patent owner and attorneys made bad-faith infringement threats on already-licensed patents in Washington. [**Intellectual Property Law**](https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith/jury-verdict/category/intellectual-property-law) [**Consumer protection**](https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith/jury-verdict/category/consumer-protection) ### **Outline** Author ![](https://media.jurimatic.com/cdn-cgi/image/q=70/profile_images/shared_image_1.webp) **Sohini Chakraborty****Sohini Chakraborty is a lawyer, with over two years of experience in legal research and analysis. She specializes in working closely with expert witnesses, offering critical support in preparing legal research and detailed case studies.** ![Article Image](https://media.jurimatic.com/cdn-cgi/image/q=70/images/Valve_Corporation.webp) A federal jury in Seattle delivered a stinging rebuke to a well-known patent licensing operation, awarding Valve Corporation $159,457 after finding that Leigh Rothschild, his network of shell entities, and their Seattle attorney repeatedly threatened the Steam platform owner over patents Valve had already paid to license back in 2016. Jurors found Claim 7 of U.S. Patent No. 8,856,221 invalid as obvious, ruled that Display Technologies materially breached the parties' Global Settlement and License Agreement by suing Valve in 2022, and concluded that every Defendant, including attorney Samuel Meyler and his firm, made bad-faith infringement assertions in violation of Washington's Patent Troll Prevention Act and Consumer Protection Act. The verdict marks one of the rare occasions a jury has tagged a prolific patent assertion entity with statutory bad-faith liability under state law, and increased damages on top. ## **Case Background** In November 2016, Valve Corporation, the Bellevue, Washington company behind the Steam gaming platform, signed a Global Settlement and License Agreement with Display Technologies, LLC to end an earlier patent infringement lawsuit. Valve paid for a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license covering a long list of patents owned by Leigh Rothschild and his web of companies. Among the patents specifically listed in Exhibit C of that agreement sat U.S. Patent No. 8,856,221, which described a system for storing broadcast content in a cloud-based environment, and U.S. Patent No. 9,300,723, a continuation patent in the same family that triggered the original 2015 dispute. Rothschild personally signed the agreement on behalf of himself and his various entities. The peace lasted less than six years. Beginning in March 2022, Rothschild's licensing arm started pressuring Valve to pay all over again, eventually culminating in two separate demand campaigns and a short-lived federal lawsuit, all over patents Valve already owned the rights to use. ### **Cause** Valve filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington on July 7, 2023, after Rothschild-controlled entities repeatedly threatened the company with infringement claims on already-licensed patents. Daniel Falcucci, a business development director at Patent Asset Management, kicked things off in March 2022 by flooding Valve's legal team with emails and LinkedIn messages pushing a new licensing deal. His pitch even bundled in patents covering surgical bone implants, products the video game company obviously did not make or sell. Falcucci never offered any infringement analysis, just demands for more money. In September 2022, Display Technologies sued Valve over the '723 Patent. Valve's lawyers sent the 2016 agreement to Meyler twice, pointing out the patent sat squarely within the license. Display Technologies quietly dropped the case in October 2022 without prejudice. Then, in June 2023, attorney Samuel Meyler of Meyler Legal PLLC sent Valve another demand letter, this time threatening suit on the '221 Patent on behalf of Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems. Less than five minutes of due diligence on the agreement would have shown that patent was licensed too. ### **Injury** Valve faced repeated bad-faith infringement threats that forced its legal team to spend time, money, and resources defending against claims the company had already paid to extinguish. The cloud of repeated threats hung over Valve's products and services, creating uncertainty about whether more lawsuits would follow. ### **Damages Sought** Valve asked the Court to declare the '221 Patent invalid and unenforceable against the company. It sought money damages for breach of the 2016 agreement, treble damages and attorney fees under Washington's Consumer Protection Act, an injunction stopping the Defendants from making any more infringement claims tied to licensed patents, and a finding that the case qualified as exceptional under federal patent law. ## **Key Arguments and Proceedings** ### **Legal Representation** **Plaintiff:** Valve Corporation · **Counsel for Plaintiff:** Dario A. Machleidt | Kathleen R. Geyer | Christopher P. Damitio | Andrea A. Anderson | David A. Reed | Marianthi Marcella Karas | Kengyeh Chu | Blake Edward Marks-Dias | Colin M George **Defendants:** Leigh Rothschild | Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems LLC | Display Technologies LLC | Patent Asset Management LLC | Samuel Meyler | Meyler Legal PLLC. · **Counsel for Defendants:** Donald R. McPhail | Matthew J. Cunanan | Eric R Chad | Joseph J Zito | Rene A Vazquez | Robert B. Cadle | Benjamin Charles Deming | ## **Key Arguments or Remarks by Counsel** Valve's lawyers painted Rothschild and his companies as classic patent trolls, pointing out that Rothschild-controlled entities filed over a thousand infringement lawsuits with the goal of extracting quick settlements rather than testing claims on the merits. They emphasized that the '221 Patent had been asserted at least 120 times without ever being upheld in a contested case. Defense counsel pushed back, denying any bad faith and arguing that Valve had no real controversy to litigate because Rothschild's covenant not to sue still protected the company. ### **Claims** Valve brought four main claims. It sought a declaratory judgment that the '221 Patent was invalid under standard patent law grounds, including obviousness over prior art. It asked the Court to declare the patent unenforceable against Valve based on the 2016 license. It claimed breach of contract, arguing that Display Technologies broke the agreement by suing in 2022 and that Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems anticipatorily breached when Meyler sent the June 2023 threat letter. Finally, Valve accused all Defendants of violating Washington's Patent Troll Prevention Act and Consumer Protection Act through bad-faith infringement assertions. ### **Defense** The Defendants denied nearly every substantive allegation. They insisted the covenant not to sue remained valid and enforceable, meaning no real dispute existed for the Court to resolve. Display Technologies filed counterclaims accusing Valve of infringing both the '195 Patent through Steam OS and the '221 Patent through Steam Cloud, arguing Valve breached its own covenant not to sue when it filed the declaratory judgment action. The defense also tossed in a business defamation counterclaim, complaining that Valve's "patent troll" labels in Court filings damaged the companies' reputations. Affirmative defenses included failure to state a claim, unclean hands, failure to mitigate, and various equitable doctrines. ## **Jury Verdict** On February 17, 2026, the jury returned a verdict that handed Valve a sweeping win. On the patent invalidity claim, jurors found that Valve proved by clear and convincing evidence that Claim 7 of the '221 Patent would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art when the patent application was filed. On the breach of contract claims, the Court had already ruled that Leigh Rothschild and Display Technologies breached the 2016 agreement by filing the 2022 lawsuit. The jury found that breach material and awarded Valve $130,000 in damages. Jurors also found that neither Rothschild nor Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems had any just excuse for repudiating the agreement when they sent the June 2023 letter, deemed both repudiations material, and awarded a nominal $1 for that anticipatory breach. On the Washington Patent Troll Prevention Act and Consumer Protection Act claims, jurors found that every Defendant, Leigh Rothschild, Rothschild Broadcast Distribution Systems, Patent Asset Management, Samuel Meyler, and Meyler Legal PLLC, made bad-faith assertions of patent infringement in the conduct of trade or commerce and for an improper purpose. The jury awarded $7,364 in base damages on those claims and found Valve entitled to increased damages, tacking on another $22,092. All told, Valve walked away with $130,000 on the 2022 contract breach, $1 in nominal damages on the 2023 repudiation, and $29,456 on the statutory bad-faith claim, for a total jury award of $159,457, with attorney fees and costs still to be decided by the Court. Court documents are available upon request at [jurimatic@exlitem.com](https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith/mailto:jurimatic@exlitem.com) [Share with Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith) [Share with X](https://x.com/intent/post?url=https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith&text=x) [Share with LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith) [Share with Email](https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith/mailto:?body=https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith&subject=email) [Share with WhatsApp](https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith%20whatsapp) ### **Find your next Expert Witness today** ![Sanjay Adhia](https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith/_ipx/q_80/user-default.svg) ###### **Sanjay Adhia** Forensic Psychiastry ![George Reis](https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith/_ipx/q_80/user-default.svg) ###### **George Reis** Forensic Imaging ![Maria Babinetz](https://exlitem.com/jury-verdict/jury-slams-patent-troll-with-159k-verdict-over-bad-faith/_ipx/q_80/user-default.svg) ###### **Maria Babinetz** Vocational Rehabilitation Find and retain experts without brokerage or upcharge. ### Looking for more? Join our subscriber community and receive regular updates delivered straight to your inbox. It’s quick, easy, and free.