On August 6, Manny Caixeiro and Elizabeth Manno published “Navigating the Murky Waters of Patent Infringement Damages” in Law360. The following is an excerpt:
One of the most complicated issues in patent litigation is determining the right amount of damages when a patent has been infringed. The damages should reflect the value of the specific patent being infringed—no more and no less.
On one hand, an infringer should pay a fair amount for using the patented technology. On the other hand, an infringer should not be required to pay for technologies that existed prior to, or are outside of, the patent.
Identifying a patent's value, however, is no easy task. One reason is that most modern patents involve small improvements over existing technologies—and it is difficult to isolate the amount of value one patent contributes over what already exists.
A second reason is that most complex products combine thousands of technologies into a single package, making it hard to know how much value each technology adds to the overall product.
The valuation of patents is, therefore, the source of intense dispute and, as this article describes, inconsistent case law.
Click here to access the article.