In Brief: Calculating royalty damages for patent infringement isn’t easy; even against a bratty, no-show defendant.

In Brief:  A patent infringer is not liable for damages incurred before notice of plaintiff’s patent rights.

In Brief:  A court’s fix of an obvious error in patent claim language can’t be used as a defense to willful patent infringement.

In Brief:  Failure to be honest during a lawsuit can result in the court vacating a judgment.

Sex predicting technology for bovines is an extremely lucrative business. The revenues are $200 million industry worldwide with about $50 million of that in the USA.

Return Mail, Inc. obtained a patent for a computerized system of bar coding so that companies can track returned and undelivered mail. The U.S. Postal Service was interested in licensing the technology. Before they could ink a licensing agreement, the Postal Service walked away and developed its own system. And that’s when the litigation began.

The Patent Office can invalidate a patent even if a court did not. %CUT% Oils States Energy LLC won a patent infringement judgment against Green Energy Group LLC. But then, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) invalidated the patent leaving Oil States emptyhanded. Oil States appealed arguing that the PTAB, an Article III (of the US Constitution) administrative tribunal, couldn’t come out differently from an Article I court. The US Supreme Court decided against Oil States. SCOTUS held that patents are a “public right”. They are a public franchise granted by the government to the owner of the patent for a period of 20 years. So, the administrative body can determine patent validity without paying homage to a different decision by a federal court.

Agreeing to assign a patent in the future isn’t an assignment at all. %CUT% Three co-inventors of a patent were employed by Company A. The co-inventors signed an employment agreement stating they “will assign” their rights to any patentable invention they created during their employment. Company A transferred its assets to Company B. Only two of the inventors assigned their patent rights to Company B. Based upon the employment agreement between the original company and the third inventor, the USPTO allowed Company B to prosecute the patent without the third inventor actually assigning the patent. Company B dissolved and its assets were transferred to Advanced Video Techs, LLC. Advanced Video then brought a patent infringement suit against HTC Corp. The district court dismissed the case holding that Advanced Video didn’t have standing to bring a patent infringement suit without joining the non-assigning inventor in the suit. On appeal, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision that Advanced Video didn’t have standing. The Federal Circuit reasoned that the agreement to assign something in the future, is not an assignment. The third co-inventor only promised to assign a future patent so she still had part ownership of the patent and had to be a party to the infringement suit.

The conventional wisdom is that in a foreign company v. Chinese company patent suit, the Chinese company will always win. Maybe not. %CUT% Danish company, Novozymes, had patented an enzyme for use in bioenergy and beverages. Novozymes sued two Chinese companies, Shandong Longda Bio Products and Jiangsu Boli Bioproducts for patent infringement. Novozymes brought the case in China. After six years of litigation, the Supreme People’s Court entered judgment against the Chinese companies. Two things make this victory even sweeter. First, certain types of biotechnology are harder to support under Chinese patent rules than patent rules in the U.S. and Europe. Second, the Chinese government devotes significant resources to Chinese companies’ research and development in the area of biotechnology.

These are not the Apple damages that you are looking for. %CUT% On December 6, 2016, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court reversed a Federal Circuit ruling that Samsung had to pay Apple $399 million for infringing on Apple’s smartphone design patent for its interface. The judgment was calculated using Samsung’s profit on its entire phone and not just the profit related to the interface. At issue was how to interpret 120 year old design patent case. In the older case, the court held that a design patent infringer who applies any “article of manufacture” would be liable to the owner for its total profit. SCOTUS clarified this holding. In the case of a multicomponent product, the relevant “article of manufacture” for arriving at damages award, could be the end product. It could also be only a component of that product. SCOTUS refused to articulate a bright light test for determining whether the entire product or just the interface should be the basis for damages. The case has been remanded to determine the damages issue.

SCOTUS tells the Federal Circuit to back off of patent damages rules. %CUT% Under the Patent Act, a court may increase the damages up to three times of a judgment. Last year, in two decisions, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals imposed strict limits on the plaintiffs’ ability to get enhanced damages. The Federal Circuit required a plaintiff to show two things: (1) that there was a high likelihood that the infringer’s actions constituted infringement; (2) that the infringer knew the risk. Under this standard, any defense by an accused infringer that was not frivolous would get them off the hook. SCOTUS reversed the Federal Circuit recognizing that the Patent Act left enhanced damages to the discretion of the trial court. SCOTUS acknowledged that Federal Circuit’s test was trying to keep enhanced damages for egregious cases only. But the test was too rigid. Justice Roberts wrote: “[The] threshold requirement excludes from discretionary punishment many of the most culpable offenders, such as the “wanton and malicious pirate” who intentionally infringes another's patent—with no doubts about its validity or any notion of a defense—for no purpose other than to steal the patentee's business.” The two cases will go back to the trial courts to determine the availability of enhanced damages using a less rigid and more neutral test.