The Central District of California has ordered Kinglite Holdings Inc. to pay $1.5M in attorney fees and expenses in its litigation against American Megatrends, Giga-Byte Technologies, and Micro-Star International (MSI). This August 31 decision by District Judge James Selna follows a June 23 ruling that the NPE’s failure to examine the accused products—and its resulting inability to show infringement of all asserted claims from the patents at issue—rendered the case exceptional under Octane. Judge Selna made this determination while the lawsuit was still in progress, finding that the defendants qualified as “prevailing parties” under Section 285 because they had obtained final judgments as to all of Kinglite’s deficient infringement claims in the first “phase” of the case.