Damages can be awarded if a patent has been infringed. Under U.S. law a patentee is entitled to damages adequate to compensate for any infringement and that compensation cannot be less than a reasonable royalty for the use made of the invention by the infringer. Enhanced patent damages are appropriate to punish an infringer’s egregious, deliberate, or flagrant patent infringement. In Europe the scope of damages awarded for patent infringement and the process of how they are awarded varies between the different European states. In general a patent holder can claim the profits of the infringer or remuneration of its own lost profits (e.g. calculated in the form of a a reasonable license fee).
On 12 July 2024 the English Court of Appeal gave its second FRAND determination judgment, in the context of an appeal and cross-appeal of Mellor J’s first instance decision in IDC v Lenovo. This decision continues the English Court’s theme, first developed in Unwired Planet, of taking a pragmatic approach to arriving at a set…
Moderna secured a double victory in the Patents Court last week (2 July 2024) in proceedings against Pfizer and BioNTech. In the first decision, Meade J found its modified mRNA patent to be valid and infringed by Pfizer and BioNTech’s “Comirnaty” vaccine. In the second decision, Richards J rejected Pfizer and BioNTech’s defence based on…
In a detailed and impeccably written decision, the Madrid Court of Appeal (Section 32) has ruled in the raloxifene case, awarding damages in the high seven figure region. This is a landmark decision which is likely to shape patent infringement claims and damage quantification, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector. The decision has important implications for…
On 23 June 2023, the Madrid Appeal Court (Section 32) published one of the most interesting judgments coming from Spanish courts during the last few years. The first point of interest is that this is one of the first judgments handed down by the brand new “Section 32” of the Madrid Appeal Court, recently established…
As readers are well aware, Directive 2004/48 EC (known as the “Enforcement Directive”), stemming from Part III of the TRIPS Agreement, was meant to introduce a minimum level of intellectual property protection throughout the European Union. For example, article 13 establishes that Member States must guarantee that judicial authorities can order the party found to…
Geofabrics Limited v Fiberweb Geosynthetics Limited [2022] EWHC 2363 (Pat) Geofabrics Limited (“Geofabrics”) has been awarded £13.4 million in damages for patent infringement, concluding a 5 year long dispute with Fiberweb Geosynthetics Limited (“Fiberweb”). Damages inquiries are rare in the UK so this judgment from Charlotte May KC (sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge),…
My eminent colleague Pierre Véron, who needs no introduction here, is the author of a recent survey on the ranking of European jurisdictions in terms of damages awarded over the period 2000-2019 [1]The full version was published in English in Festschrift for President Meier-Beck in the journal GRUR (GRUR 2/2021)., which particularly caught my attention…
As many readers will already know, two new full-time Patents Judges have been appointed to the English Court in the last 9 months – Meade and Mellor JJ. Despite the challenges that the global pandemic has brought, the English Patents Court has coped remarkably well and there has been no let-up in the progress of…
Introduction A key mechanism in patent litigation and specifically for generics is the concept of “launch at risk”. In short the concept means that a product is launched prior to the expiry of a patent despite the risk that the patent proprietor in such case could initiate infringement proceedings which often includes requests for a…
Normal service looks to have been resumed following the Court of Appeal judgment in IPCom v Vodafone [2021] EWCA Civ 205, in which Arnold LJ reversed a first instance finding by Recorder Douglas Campbell QC that Vodafone was entitled to a defence of Crown use in respect of certain acts which infringed an IPCom patent,…
