Lynwood Investments CY Limited v. Konovalov

Background

Lynwood Investments CY Limited filed the action seeking more than $750 million in damages based on an alleged conspiracy by F5, Inc., NGINX entities, and individual defendants to take a web-server business from Rambler Internet Holding LLC. Lynwood alleged that Rambler had assigned its intellectual-property rights to Lynwood in 2015. The court previously dismissed Lynwood’s complaints.

The F5 Entities—F5, Inc., NGINX., Inc. (BVI), and NGINX Software, Inc.—requested $837,602.15 in attorneys’ fees under section 505 of the Copyright Act. The Individual Defendants—Maxim Konovalov, Igor Sysoev, Andrey Alexeev, Maxim Dounin, Gleb Smirnoff, and Angus Robertson—requested $769,299.10. In an earlier order, the court found that each defendant was entitled to an award, but it needed contemporaneous time records before determining the amount.

Issues and Analysis

Lynwood argued that section 505 did not authorize fees for non-copyright claims and that the requested fees were unreasonable and excessive. The court rejected the first argument. It concluded that the non-copyright claims identified by the defendants shared a common core of facts and related legal theories with Lynwood’s direct copyright-infringement claim. The court therefore allowed defendants to seek fees for work connected to those related claims.

The court used the lodestar method, which calculates fees by multiplying reasonable hours by a reasonable hourly rate. It found the defendants’ requested hourly rates reasonable based on the attorneys’ actual rates, qualifications, experience, the complexity of the case, and the results obtained.

For the F5 Entities, the court found the claimed hours generally reasonable, including time spent on general defense work such as discovery disputes, court-ordered mediation, and case management. It deducted $32,978.82 because the F5 Entities had not provided contemporaneous time records for work performed in April 2021. The resulting award was $804,623.33.

For the Individual Defendants, the court reduced the requested fees for several billing problems. It reduced fees by $25,861.90 for block billing, $36,614.12 for heavily redacted entries, $46,753.62 for vague entries, and $76,777.50 for vaguely described conference-call time. The resulting award was $583,291.96.

Disposition

Judge Chesney ordered that the defendants’ motions for attorneys’ fees were granted in part and denied in part. The F5 Entities were awarded $804,623.33, and the Individual Defendants were awarded $583,291.96. The order states that, in all other respects, the motion was denied.