In what both sides agree may be the largest award of attorneys’ fees ever in a copyright case, a federal judge in Houston has awarded Compaq Computer Corp. more than $2.7 million. On April 12, U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon denied a motion to reconsider an earlier decision that Ergonome Inc. and its two principals, Stephanie Brown and Thomas Mowrey, pay Compaq $2,765,026 in attorneys’ fees in a copyright infringement action between the two companies. Harmon also ordered Ergonome’s former attorney, Kent Rowald, and his two former, now-defunct firms, Vaden, Eickenroht & Thompson and Felsman, Bradley, Vaden, Gunter & Dillon, to reimburse Compaq $101,822 in attorneys’ fees for “unreasonable and vexatious conduct” during discovery.
In 1993, Brown wrote a book published by Ergonome, a New York ergonomics training company and publisher, titled “Preventing Computer Injury: The HAND Book.” Ergonome and Brown alleged in a suit that Compaq infringed on the copyright for the book in the 1994 revisions to Compaq’s “Safety and Comfort Guide,” a manual on ergonomics shipped with every Compaq personal computer.
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