Google Spent $100 Million Defending Viacom Suit

by lawshucks on July 15, 2010

We wrote about all the top-notch lawyers Google used defending its YouTube division against Viacom’s copyright claims.

Well, all that talent doesn’t come cheap.

At the 2nd quarter earnings call, Google CFO Patrick Pichette revealed the total legal bill was $100 million.

Yes, $100 million… and they never got to trial. And Viacom is still appealing.

That’s a nice chunk of change for Wilson Sonsini and Mayer Brown, who represented Google.

Presumably Shearman & Sterling and Jenner & Block got paid similar amounts by Viacom.

Tagged as: google, jenner & block, mayer brown, shearman & sterling, viacom, wilson sonsini

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Alsee

Is there any chance Google can get the court to award them these costs from Viacom? I know that legal costs are awarded to the winning side in at least some copyright cases, including when it is the defendant that wins.

http://intensedebate.com/people/lawshucks lawshucks

Probably not. One of the "features" of the American judicial system is that anyone can bring pretty much any colorable claim. There's a fairly high bar to recovering fees for frivolous litigation (or meritorious defense of non-frivolous for that matter). The plaintiffs' lobby is extremely powerful.

We're definitely not litigators, but we know many read the blog. If there's an exception for copyright or if they have a different view, hopefully they'll let us all know

Anyway, this would likely be covered by Google's insurance coverage.

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Google Spent $100 Million Defending Viacom Suit

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