IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—S.D. Ohio: Fees, costs awarded to laboratory automation company for prevailing against copyright claims, (Mar 6, 2026)

By Carolin Dennis, B.Sc., LL.B., LL.M.

Plaintiff's continued pursuit of the litigation after failing to provide a copyright registration—a necessary component of an infringement claim—was objectively unreasonable.

Software solutions provider LabWare, Inc., was entitled to recover attorney fees and costs incurred in successfully defending itself against copyright infringement and trade secret misappropriation claims, the federal district court for Cincinnati has held. The plaintiff—a competing software developer—was objectively unreasonable because its copyright claims were not based on a registration, which is a prerequisite to an infringement suit (Cincom Systems, Inc. v. LabWare, Inc., No. 1:20-cv-00083-MWM-SKB (S.D. Ohio Mar. 4, 2026)).

Plaintiff Cincom Systems, Inc., is the owner, through a series of transfers, of the exclusive rights to market and license a series of software platforms built upon the Smalltalk programming language. Customers use the product for application development, software, web applications, development tools, and deployment. Defendant LabWare, Inc. (Labware) offers what is known as Laboratory Information Management System, a series of laboratory automation solutions intended to improve productivity, throughput, efficiency, data integrity, and compliance. Cincom filed suit in 2020, alleging that Labware had purloined its software and improperly marketed, licensed, developed, and distributed products built upon it. Additionally, the complaint asserted, Labware had improperly provided maintenance and support to third party users of the software. The complaint asserted claims of copyright infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets under the Ohio Uniform Trade Secrets Act, conversion, and unjust enrichment.

The district court dismissed the claims of conversion and unjust enrichment on the grounds that they were preempted by the Ohio trade secrets statute, leaving only the copyright infringement and trade secrets claims in the case. Both parties moved for summary judgment after discovery. Labware then filed a motion for attorney fees and a Bill of Costs. Cincom also appealed the district court’s order granting summary judgment. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision granting summary judgment. Labware then filed a renewed motion for attorney fees to include fees incurred during the appellate proceedings.

Bill of costs. Labware requested $61,151.80 in costs to be taxed against Cincom. This total includes: $42,991.05 in fees for printed or electronically recorded transcripts, $16,248.25 in fees for exemplification and the costs of making copies of materials used in the case, including documents shared as part of discovery, and $1,912.50 in compensation of interpreters and special interpretation services. Cincom objected on the ground that the bill of costs was excessive and contained unallowable costs. Cincom broke down the costs into four categories: (1) deposition transcript costs; (2) video deposition costs; (3) document copy costs; and (4) interpreter costs. The district court agreed with Labware that, at the time of taking, these depositions were necessary. Cincom argued that the video depositions that Labware did not file or use to support its motion for summary judgment were not necessary for the maintenance of the action. To the extent that Cincom objected to covering the costs of video depositions not used in the court proceedings, the district court noted that the relevant inquiry was whether the deposition was deemed necessary at the time of taking, which it was for all three witnesses.

While Cincom admitted that it did request documents throughout the litigation, it stated that Labware produced thousands of documents and hundreds of thousands of pages that were duplicative and unnecessary, and many of the documents were produced in unusable form. As such, Cincom requested that the district court deny, or at least reduce, the requested costs for copying. The district court noted that, in a letter to Labware’s counsel from Cincom’s counsel, Cincom specifically demanded the production of thousands of documents arising from ESI hit counts, even though Labware had declared the search terms that generated those hit counts to be overbroad. The letter then continued by stating that Labware "must review and produce all the documents" provided from the hit counts. Thus, the district court agreed that these copies, although numerous, were necessary to meet Labware’s discovery obligations.

Lastly, the district court found that although the interpreter provided services for a deposition that was never used or even filed with the court, the interpreter for the deposition, along with the deposition itself, was necessary at the time of taking.

Accordingly, Cincom’s objection to the costs were not well-taken.

Attorney fees. Under the Copyright Act, a court has discretion to award reasonable attorney fees and costs to the prevailing party. In deciding whether to award attorney fees to Labware as the prevailing party under the Copyright Act, the district court considered the Fogerty factors: (1) frivolousness; (2) motivation in defending the copyrights; (3) objective reasonableness; and (4) considerations of compensation and deterrence.

Labware argued that the objective unreasonableness of the Cincom’s copyright claim when filed because it was not based on a copyright registration weighed heavily in favor of awarding attorney fees. The district court agreed with Labware that without providing a necessary component of a claim under the Copyright Act, that is, a registration, Cincom’s motives in continuing to pursue the copyright claim were seemingly improper.

Labware argued that Cincom already engaged in litigation with another party and received a settlement from a baseless copyright claim related to the same software at issue here. Labware also noted that, as part of discovery, it learned about some of the other copyright claims brought by Cincom, and that one of Cincom’s executives stated that at least one of the claims involved exactly the same thing as this case. The district court found that Cincom has an interest in claims intended to protect its intellectual property; yet, an award here aims to deter claims such as this one that were objectively unreasonable. Deterrence, therefore, also weighed toward an award of attorney fees. Thus, on balance, the Fogerty factors favored an award of fees to the Labware.

The Case is No. 1:20-cv-00083-MWM-SKB.

Judge: McFarland, M.

Attorneys: Joseph M. Callow (Callow & Utter LLC) for Cincom Systems, Inc. Douglas M. Garrou (Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP) for LabWare, Inc.

Companies: Cincom Systems, Inc.; LabWare, Inc.

Cases: Copyright TechnologyInternet TradeSecrets