In the latest Proxy Wars Episode, the Judge Orders Negotiations after the Jury Order Oxylabs to Pay $7.5m.

Proxy

After a Texas jury awarded almost $7.5 million to Oxylabs for patent infringement against Bright Data, another judge ordered the two parties to go through mediation to address their differences.

A court ruling states that “the parties may benefit from an endeavour to address their differences via mediation” and gives the parties 45 days to comply with the decision.

Bright Data (previously Luminati) filed the lawsuit, saying that Tesonet infringed Bright Data’s patents by offering a “residential proxy service” to route internet traffic via devices of millions of home or mobile customers globally since July 2018. The case’s legal chronology may be viewed on Oxylabs’ website.

Data trust

Bright Data said at the time of the first judgement that it was satisfied with the judgement, which determined that Oxylabs’ infringement was intentional. “This is a wonderful and deserved conclusion for us and the whole community,” said Or Lenchner, CEO of Bright Data. “Before you can trust the online data you get, you must first trust the data gathering partners on whom you depend.”

Oxylabs made a supplementary statement emphasising that “the jury’s ruling pertains to a claim for monetary damages solely.” As a result, Oxylabs may continue to provide the alleged services as before.”

“It would be an understatement to say that we were dissatisfied with the outcome,” said Julius erniauskas, CEO of Oxylabs. While we disagree with it and will appeal to a higher court, we appreciate the jurors for their time and work throughout the process. Our organisation has always stressed the significance of ethics, positive constraint, and regulation. Oxylabs is dedicated to these ideals, and we will continue our search for justice.”

Proxy warfare

While the complaint cites Lithuania-based Teso LT, UAB as a defendant rather than “Tesonet,” this is due to a corporate restructure that occurred some years ago. Aside from its connection to Oxylabs, Tesonet promotes itself as the inventor and investor in a variety of internet businesses, including NordVPN, Hostinger, and others.

Tom Okman, co-founder of both Tesonet and Nord Security, addressed questions about the link between Tesonet, NordVPN, and the variety of connected online services the firms provide in an interview with TechRadar Pro.

Luminati was also the owner of Hola VPN, which was embroiled in a controversy in 2015. Back then, the firm claimed to alter its practises, and its CEO (and Bright Data founder), Ofer Vilenski, promised to cease selling idle bandwidth from Hola customers, even as it continued to run its home proxy service.

Aside from Oxylabs and Bright Data, the following firms account for the majority of the market: Netnut, Squidproxies, Storm Proxies, IPRoyal, and Smart Proxy.

Proxies may be used for a variety of reasons, including data scraping, website testing, brand protection, and ad verification. They may, however, utilise unscrupulous ways to conduct their companies, including reselling unaware internet customers’ bandwidth.