Netflix Asks Judge to Order $3 Million in Legal Fees Over Alleged Patent Fraud

Netflix pressed a federal judge in California to force a Finnish businessman, Lauri Valjakka, and his former patent attorney to jointly pay roughly $3 million in legal fees, arguing that both men pursued patent litigation against the company despite knowing the underlying patent claim was invalid from the start.

During a virtual hearing last week before U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar, Netflix's counsel argued that the case amounted to exceptional misconduct that justified shifting the company's legal costs onto the opposing side.

Representing Netflix, attorney Sarah Piepmeier told the judge that Valjakka understood before he even filed suit in September 2021 that he did not actually own the patent he was asserting against the streaming company.

According to Netflix, William Ramey, founder of Ramey LLP, learned about that ownership problem roughly two months later when he took over as Valjakka's lawyer. The streaming giant said Valjakka's original attorney, Erick Robinson, had tried to withdraw from the case after another company targeted in similar litigation, Akamai Technologies, raised doubts about whether Valjakka actually held rights to the patent in question, U.S. Patent No. 8,495,167.

Piepmeier told the court that Robinson laid out his reasons for stepping away from the case in an email now before the court, describing a dispute with Valjakka's litigation funder over the propriety of the broader litigation campaign and noting that he hadn't learned of the ownership problem until after the cases were already filed. Robinson later confirmed those details in a sworn declaration submitted alongside Netflix's fee request, according to Piepmeier.

Netflix's lawyer reminded the court that Valjakka had run a broad, multi-jurisdiction patent campaign against Netflix and several other companies, and that his initial complaint accused Netflix of infringing two separate data communications patents.

Piepmeier characterized the entire suit as frivolous from its inception, arguing it was filed in bad faith and pursued through improper conduct. She also pointed to Valjakka's transfer of settlement proceeds from other litigation to a separate company, conduct that prompted Netflix to seek and win a preliminary injunction after the court found evidence Valjakka intended to defraud Netflix as a creditor under California's voidable transactions law.

According to the streaming giant, the court's earlier findings pointed to a pattern of fraudulent intent stretching across Valjakka's entire litigation strategy, not just his dispute with Netflix, and noted that he had signed settlement agreements promising licensing rights he did not actually hold.

Piepmeier also referenced internal emails turned over by Valjakka's litigation funder, AiPi, which she said showed Ramey grew uneasy about the case and worried about the prospect of a future fee motion, at one point telling the funder that losing the case would trigger a major fee dispute. Because Ramey became aware of the ownership issue when he took over in November 2021, Netflix is seeking fees dating back to that point.

Ramey pushed back forcefully during the hearing, telling the judge that Netflix was misapplying federal fee-shifting law to try to hold him jointly liable alongside his former client. He also disputed the idea that the ownership theory was baseless, noting that the question remains actively contested in Finnish courts and that Finland's Supreme Court had reopened proceedings that he said undercut claims that Valjakka never owned the patent.

Ramey further said Robinson never warned him the claims were flawed when he stepped into the case, telling him instead that the ownership concerns raised by Akamai were manageable, and stressed that he was not copied on the email Netflix now relies on. He argued it defied logic to suggest an attorney would knowingly take over a case another lawyer had flagged as improper.

The underlying suit began in the Western District of Texas before being transferred by agreement to the Northern District of California. Netflix later sought judgment on the pleadings, arguing both asserted patents covered unpatentable abstract ideas under the Supreme Court's 2014 Alice v. CLS Bank ruling.

Judge Tigar partially agreed in August 2023, tossing one patent but allowing the case to continue on the second. Five months later, he dismissed the remaining claim entirely after finding that the patent had been sold off back in 2005, rejecting arguments tied to Scandinavian ownership disputes and telling the parties that grievances about Finland's judicial process belonged in Finnish courts, not his own.

Ramey LLP was allowed to withdraw from the case in March 2024 after Valjakka stopped paying for the firm's services, but the case didn't end there for Ramey.

In July 2025, Judge Tigar sanctioned both Ramey and his firm for sharing Netflix's confidential information with a third party during the litigation, later ordering them to pay Netflix $95,000 in fees.

Netflix filed its broader fee motion in April, arguing that Valjakka and Ramey should be held jointly and severally liable for what it called a conservative estimate of its total legal costs.