Patent Troll Sable Pays Cloudflare, Dedicates Its Entire Portfolio to the Public
Cloudflare's years-long fight against patent troll Sable IP and Sable Networks has finally concluded. After a jury verdict in Cloudflare's favor in February 2024, the case has now been fully resolved with Sable paying Cloudflare $225,000, granting a royalty-free license to its entire patent portfolio, and dedicating those patents to the public.
This is the end of a saga that began in March 2021, when Sable sued Cloudflare over roughly 100 claims from four patents. Sable is a shell entity that acquired the patent portfolio of Caspian Networks, a router company that went out of business nearly 20 years ago. Sable had previously sued Cisco, Fortinet, Check Point, SonicWall, and Juniper Networks, all of which settled out of court. Cloudflare chose a different path.
From Hardware Routers to Modern Software
Sable sought to stretch patents about hardware-based router technology from two decades ago to cover Cloudflare's modern, software-defined services. Facing a trial in Texas, Cloudflare mounted a two-pronged defense: the accused products — Magic Transit and Argo for Packets — do not infringe the one remaining claim, and that claim, claim 25 of U.S. Patent No. 7,012,919 (the '919 patent), is invalid.
Cloudflare's witnesses, including senior engineer Eric Reeves and Dr. Paul Min, a professor of electrical and systems engineering at Washington University, made the technical case to the jury. First, they explained that Cloudflare's products process packets individually, on a packet-by-packet basis, and do not route "flows" or "micro-flows" as required by the claim. This individual packet processing is fundamental to how Cloudflare's DDoS and security services operate.
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Second, they drew a clear distinction between Cloudflare's architecture and the old router technology described in the patent. The '919 patent requires processes to occur "at" ingress and egress line cards. As Dr. Min explained, line cards are a specific physical hardware component common in routers from the Caspian era. Cloudflare's servers don't have them.
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Sable's technical expert tried to stretch the definition of "line card" to cover Cloudflare's software and hardware components, but the explanation did not hold up. The products are built on fundamentally different architectural principles, and the benefits customers get from them are not attributable to anything in the '919 patent.
Invalidating the Last Claim
Cloudflare also took on the harder burden of proving invalidity by clear and convincing evidence. Dr. Min testified that two prior art references — U.S. Patent No. 6,584,071 (Kodialam from Nortel Networks) and U.S. Patent No. 6,680,933 (Cheeseman from Lucent) — together rendered claim 25 obvious. Both are router-related patents from the late 1990s, predating the '919 patent's priority date.
After a five-day trial, the jury deliberated for under two hours before returning a unanimous verdict: Cloudflare does not infringe, and the claim is invalid.
Sable's Goal Was Always a Payout
The trial also exposed Sable's motivation. Sable's founder, Brooks Borchers, admitted under cross-examination that the company's business model is filing lawsuits. Its damages expert, Stephen Dell, demanded between $25 million and $94.2 million, but Judge Albright said he was "very skeptical" of the methodology behind that figure. Cloudflare's damages expert similarly walked the jury through the flawed inputs and assumptions behind the inflated demand.
It did not matter in the end. But the post-trial phase brought an unexpected twist: rather than appeal, Sable agreed to pay Cloudflare $225,000 and permanently surrendered its entire patent portfolio to the public. That dedication means Sable can never again assert these patents against any company.
Project Jengo Final Awards
Throughout the case, Cloudflare's Project Jengo prior art contest was a key part of the strategy. By asking the public to find prior art to invalidate all of Sable's patents, not just the ones in litigation, Project Jengo incentivizes the opposite of the patent troll model. So far, Cloudflare has awarded $70,000 in prizes across chapters 1 through 8, and another $30,000 remains for the Final Awards.
With the case concluded, Cloudflare has now announced the winners of Chapters 7 and 8. George W., an electrical engineer and lawyer, and Madhu each won $5,000 for providing detailed element-by-element comparison charts of prior art against the Sable patents. Jatin and Ketan won the Chapter 8 prizes for their submissions, including two references particularly relevant to the '919 patent.
Submissions for Project Jengo's Final Awards are now being accepted for the last time. The 30-day grace period runs until November 2, 2024, after which the final winners will be selected and the complete list of submitted prior art will be published.
