On Monday, in a significant victory for patent owners, the U.S. Supreme Court swept away the Federal Circuit’s “inelastic” framework for assessing enhanced patent damages and found that 35 U.S.C. § 284 means what it says: that a court “may increase the damages [for infringement] up to three times the amount found or assessed.” See Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., No. 14-1513 (June 13, 2016), available here. Unlike the Federal Circuit’s 2007 Seagate decision, which mandated that district courts follow a rigid two-step analysis, Halo Electronics confirms that district courts have discretion in awarding enhanced damages, and that those courts are to “take into account the particular circumstances of each case and reserve punishment for egregious cases.” Equally important, Halo also holds that a patent owner must only prove its entitlement to enhanced damages by a preponderance of the evidence, rejecting Seagate’s higher standard of clear and convincing evidence.