US Court Orders EscapeX, Lawyers To Pay Google USD 2.5 Lakh As Cost For Frivolous Patent Suit

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld a California court's order requiring a mobile app developer- EscapeX to pay Google more than USD 2.5 lakh in attorneys' fees and costs after finding that the company filed a frivolous patent infringement lawsuit and then tried to prolong the case with an equally baseless post-judgment motion.

This included a USD 63,525 that EscapeX and its lawyers must jointly pay for multiplying the proceedings.

In a ruling dated November 25, 2025, Circuit Judges Taranto, Stoll and Stark affirmed all three orders of the District Court. The first awarded Google USD 191,302.18 for defending itself. The second rejected EscapeX's attempt to amend the judgment. The third granted Google an additional USD 63,525.30 and held EscapeX and its attorneys jointly and severally liable for that amount.

EscapeX had sued Google claiming that YouTube Music infringed its patent for a “System and Method for Generating Artist-Specified Dynamic Albums.” Google pointed out that the accused features were not even present in YouTube Music. EscapeX then changed its accusation to a different feature called “YouTube Video with Auto-Add” even though publicly available information showed that this feature existed before the patent's priority date.

Google repeatedly wrote to EscapeX explaining why its claims had no factual basis. EscapeX did not respond and instead filed a misleading 'joint' dismissal telling the court that both sides had agreed to bear their own fees. Google immediately objected and EscapeX withdrew the filing.

The District Court found that EscapeX had conducted “no serious pre-suit investigation,” had “cobbled together” allegations from unrelated Google products, and had continued the lawsuit despite being repeatedly alerted to its flaws. It concluded the case was frivolous and awarded fees to Google.

EscapeX then tried to amend the judgment submitting declarations from its president and an engineer and claiming they were “newly discovered evidence.” The court found the motion frivolous because these witnesses had always been available to EscapeX. The Appeals Court agreed and noted that EscapeX had failed to show any manifest injustice.

Google sought additional fees for having to respond to the frivolous motion. The District Court agreed and ordered EscapeX and its lawyers to pay USD 63,525 The Appeals Court upheld this sanction and remarked that counsel could have avoided it “by simply not filing such a motion.”