In Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc.,1 the Supreme Court held that 35 U.S.C. Section 284 provides for enhanced damages in egregious cases...more
Enhanced Damages Under the Patent Act - The Patent Act provides that once infringement has been established, a district court may “increase the damages up to three times the amount found or assessed.” 35 U.S.C. § 284. The...more
Historically, patent owners have pled willful infringement in an effort to support the collection of enhanced damages from an infringer. Typically, if there was willful infringement the damages were enhanced and often...more
Supreme Court Expands Discretion to Award Enhanced Damages for Patent Infringement and Eliminates the Federal Circuit’s ‘Seagate Test’ - In Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court...more
Obvious Combinations Do Not Need to Be Physically Combinable - In Allied Erecting and Dismantling Co., Inc. v. Genesis Attachments, LLC, Appeal No. 2015-1533, the Federal Circuit affirmed the PTAB’s invalidity finding...more
On June 13, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court again reversed a decision of the Federal Circuit—the Circuit specially designated to hear all patent appeals—this time, in articulating the test for determining whether to award...more
Patent infringement plaintiffs and defendants alike fret over enhanced damages: Section 284 of the Patent Act, the basis for enhanced damages, provides that a court may grant a damages award up to three times actual damages....more
The Supreme Court of the United States traced two centuries of analysis related to enhanced damages in patent cases to conclude that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s two-part test, announced nearly a decade...more
Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC v. Lee (No. 2015-446, 6/20/16) (Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, Kagan) - June 20, 2016 12:49 PM - Breyer, J. Affirming Federal Circuit decision that the...more
On June 13, 2016 Chief Justice Roberts delivered a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Halo v. Pulse on the question of when enhanced damages can be awarded for patent infringement. This decision reversed...more
Section 284 of the Patent Act provides that, in the event of damages for patent infringement, “the court may increase the damages up to three times the amount found or assessed.” In 2007, the Federal Circuit in In re Seagate...more
On June 13, 2016, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in two consolidated cases (Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics and Stryker Corp. v. Zimmer) effectively lowering the standard for obtaining enhanced damages in...more
In a relatively rare “pro-patent” decision, the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this week unanimously overruled the Federal Circuit’s so-called Seagate standard for finding willful patent infringement and awarding enhanced...more
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:...more
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 2007 decision in In re Seagate Tech., LLC, 497 F.3d 1360 (Fed. Cir....more
On June 13, 2016, in a much-anticipated joint holding in Halo/Stryker, [1] the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the Federal Circuit’s rigid test for willful infringement under Seagate and conferred discretion on district...more
In recent years, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the Federal Circuit’s strict tests concerning monetary relief in patent cases in favor of more fluid standards that commit discretion to the district courts. In...more
Section 284 of The Patent Act provides that in a case of infringement, courts “may increase the damages up to three times the amount found or assessed.” Under Seagate, to be entitled to enhanced damages under § 284, a patent...more
Patent infringers take note: clever defenses by ingenious litigation counsel may come too late to save you from an award of exemplary damages. On Monday, June 13, in Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics and Stryker Corp. v....more
On June 13, the US Supreme Court handed down an important unanimous decision relaxing the standard for an award of enhanced patent damages under 35 U.S.C. § 284. See Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., 579 U.S....more
This week in Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., the United States Supreme Court changed the law regarding when enhanced damages should be awarded in patent infringement cases, by eliminating the two-part test...more
Patent owners will more likely seek enhanced damages; accused infringers no longer insulated by “attorney’s ingenuity” after the fact. Summary - The Federal Circuit’s 2007 Seagate decision raised the bar for...more
If you read one thing ... - The Supreme Court discarded the Federal Circuit’s heightened Seagate standard for awarding enhanced damages under the Patent Act. - The new standard increases the chance of an...more
Although under the Patent Act, “a court may increase the damages [for patent infringement] up to three times,” 35 U.S.C. § 284, enhanced damages awards are infrequent. For nearly a decade, the Federal Circuit’s en banc...more
In Halo Electronics, Inc. v. Pulse Electronics, Inc., the Supreme Court rejected the Federal Circuit’s two-part Seagate test for awarding enhanced damages under 35 USC § 284, finding that both the substantive requirement for...more