Under Halo, courts still retain the discretion to enhance damages after a finding of willfulness, and the decision even includes a description of the type of conduct that would warrant enhanced damages, to wit: Second, the court reduced the standard of proof from clear and convincing evidence to a preponderance of the evidence. In practice, the removal of this step precludes defendants’ ability to file a motion for summary judgment under this prong. The court reasoned that this test would absolve “wanton and malicious pirate” from punishment by allowing defendants to insulate themselves with reasonable, but ultimately unsuccessful, defenses. First, the high court removed the “objective” prong from In re Seagate. In Halo, the Supreme Court made two significant changes to the Federal Circuit’s framework for willful infringement. The court could increase the damages award by up to three times. If a jury returned a verdict of willful infringement, the ultimate decision whether to enhance damages, and by how much, was within the discretion of the court. Subjective knowledge, i.e., that the risk of infringement was either known to the accused infringer or so obvious that it should have been known.Objective recklessness, i.e., that the infringer acted despite an objectively high likelihood that its actions constituted infringement of a valid patent.
2007)) required that a patentee prove the following by clear and convincing evidence: Prior to Halo, the Federal Circuit’s two-part test to determine willful patent infringement (from In re Seagate Tech., LLC, 497 F.3d 1360 (Fed. But first, a discussion of Halo‘s impact so far and what conduct courts have considered egregious enough to support an award of enhanced damages. Now, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Halo, does your standard procedure need to change, and what steps should you take to reduce the risk of a finding of willful infringement? Should you get an opinion of counsel? Or is it impractical to do so, given the number of letters the company receives and the cost of getting such opinions? In this situation, you have several options, which we will review below. Pulse Electronics, you had a standard process for addressing these types of patent assertions a process that you’ve followed for almost a decade under the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals’ Seagate decision. Before the US Supreme Court decision this summer in Halo v. You are tasked with addressing this risk and taking steps to avoid a finding of willful patent infringement. The letter accuses your company’s flagship product of patent infringement. It is one of many such letters the company received this year. Your boss, the General Counsel, received a letter this morning from an aggressive patent assertion entity.
0 kommentar(er)
