Meritas Capability Webinar - Controlling Where to Fight and Who Pays for it?
Statutes permitting discretionary attorney fee-shifting for prevailing defendants vary in the circumstances under which fee-shifting is permitted. Two recent cases tackling the question of why and when a lawsuit warrants...more
HITKANSUT LLC V. UNITED STATES - Before Prost, Clevenger, and Moore. Appeal from the Court of Federal Claims. Summary: Fee-shifting under 28 U.S.C. § 1498(a), turns on whether “the position of the United States was...more
Federal Circuit Summaries - Before Lourie, O’Malley, and Wallach. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas Summary: When a case is dismissed with prejudice for lack of standing,...more
Design Patents—Supreme Court Decides Samsung v. Apple - Why it matters: On December 6, 2016, the Supreme Court decided Samsung v. Apple, holding that, for purposes of a "total profits" damages award for infringement of a...more
In the immortal words of the most recent Nobel Laureate in literature, “the times they are a changin.’” Section 35(a) of the Lanham Act provides that “[t]he court in exceptional cases may award reasonable attorney fees to...more
Supreme Court Abolished Federal Circuit's Test for Willfulness - On June 13, 2016, in Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., 579 U.S. ___ (2016), the Supreme Court unanimously abrogated the Federal Circuit’s...more
Non-practicing entity (“NPE”) plaintiffs beware and NPE defendants be delighted: sanctions for objectively unreasonable claims and conduct are alive and well. Defendants in NPE litigations, particularly in the Eastern...more
In most litigation, each party pays its own attorney fees and costs, regardless of the outcome of the case. The Patent Act of 1952, however, allowed for an award of fees to the prevailing party in patent litigation in...more
Addressing the degree to which litigation conduct can preclude the recovery of fees under 35 U.S. C. § 285, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated the denial of a fee award, finding that sloppy litigation...more
Last week, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, released a 200-page Report on H.R. 9, "The innovation Act," introduced by Chairman Goodlatte with several co-sponsors earlier this year. The bill sets...more
With yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee vote, there are now competing, and in some respects significantly different, patent reform proposals under serious consideration in the House and the Senate. Among the most important...more
On February 5, 2015, Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-VA) introduced H.R. 9, entitled the “Innovation Act.” Among other things, the bill would direct courts to award attorneys’ fees and litigation-related expenses to prevailing...more
There is a continued need for patent reform to address the asymmetrical costs that patent litigation imposes on defendants. Given the substantial costs imposed on U.S. technology companies by the number of suits brought by...more
Anyone that has been monitoring the outcome of district court cases recently will be aware of the perils of not including sufficient information, or not timely supplementing, preliminary infringement or invalidity contentions...more
Fee-shifting in patent infringement suits has been authorized by statute since 1952, for application in “exceptional cases.” For the past nine years, that statute has not often been applied as a result of the Federal...more
In the recent cases OCTANE FITNESS, LLC v. ICON HEALTH & FITNESS, INC. and HIGHMARK INC. v. ALLCARE HEALTH MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, INC., the U.S. Supreme Court empowered district court judges to award attorney fees to prevailing...more