Finjan Files Complaint Against Avast

EAST PALO ALTO, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 23, 2017) - Finjan Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: FNJN), a cybersecurity company, today announced that its subsidiary Finjan, Inc. ("Finjan") filed a complaint on January 19, 2017 against its licensee, Avast Software, and its newly acquired company AVG Technologies, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Case No. 3:17-cv-00283). Finjan is suing Avast for breach of contract and breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing; and both Avast and AVG for willful infringement of Finjan's patents, including U.S. Patent Nos. 6,154,844; 7,930,299; 7,975,305; 8,079,086; 8,141,154; and 8,677,494.

Finjan entered into a Confidential Patent License, Settlement and Release Agreement ("Patent License Agreement") with Avast on November 15, 2015. Since the Agreement is confidential, the public version of the Complaint obscures contract terms cited in support of Finjan's claims. On July 7, 2016, Avast announced an agreement to acquire AVG for $1.3 billion, which would result in more than doubling their user base globally. The acquisition closed on September 30, 2016, and they now functionally operate as a single company.

"Avast's recent acquisition of AVG triggered certain terms in the Patent License Agreement that excludes an acquired company's products as licensed," said Julie Mar-Spinola, CIPO of Finjan Holdings. "Furthermore, Finjan had notified AVG that AVG was infringing its patents nearly nine months prior to the acquisition being announced. Consistent with our best practices, Finjan strove to negotiate a fair value license with Avast to cover such AVG products to no avail. Avast's resistance has forced Finjan to escalate this dispute to the court, in order to preserve the value of our patent portfolio and stakeholders' related interests." 

Finjan has pending infringement lawsuits or appeals against FireEye, Inc., Sophos, Inc., Symantec Corp., Palo Alto Networks, Blue Coat Systems, Inc., ESET and its affiliates and Cisco Systems, Inc. relating to, collectively, more than 20 patents in the Finjan portfolio. The court dockets for the foregoing cases are publicly available on the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) website, www.pacer.gov, which is operated by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.