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).
Joining the majority of European courts, the Paris Court of Justice ruled that Eli Lilly’s patent, which relates to the combined administration of pemetrexed disodium and vitamin B12, was infringed by the marketing of Fresenius’ pemetrexed diacid. It also awarded a record amount of damages of €28,000,000: a first in Europe. 1. The pemetrexed “saga”…
The tendency of English people to be understated in their use of language (other than on Twitter…) is often joked about with continental friends and colleagues. For example, when an English person expresses a slight disagreement, their continental counterpart might have felt more able to be blunt and say that something is just plain wrong. …
In the United States, a judge may increase the damages for patent infringement up to threefold[1] resulting in awards of millions, or even billons, of dollars. In 2016, the Supreme Court, in Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics,[2] rejected the then prevailing objective standard for determining enhanced damages and replaced it with a subjective one requiring,…
A recurring topic of discussion in patent infringement proceedings in Spain is the degree of evidence required to prove the damage caused by acts of patent infringement. According to a line of case law handed down by the Supreme Court, the existence of the damage may be proved by demonstrating the existence of the unlawful…
Upon reading the title of this blog entry, readers may be wondering what the “ex re ipsa” doctrine involves. It therefore may be worth clarifying that it is a legal doctrine applied, for example, to cases dealing with damages, where the damage is presumed to have been caused (“causality”) when it is inherent to the…
Whilst being wary of placing too much emphasis on statistics (the phrase “lies, damn lies and statistics” comes to mind), the authors have seen figures which suggest that the last ten years have consistently seen English patent litigation outcomes which are overall less favourable to the patentee than their opponents. That is until 2017, when…
On March 28, 2018, the Beijing High Court issued its decision for Iwncomm v. Sony, a high profile case concerning infringement of a standard essential patent (SEP). The appellate court amended the trial judgment on some key findings, but still upheld a permanent injunction and damages of about CNY 9 million (USD 1.3 million)….
Yesterday was St. Nicholas Day in Germany and many other European Countries. As Wikipedia helpfully as always explains, St. Nicholas fills the boot with gifts and sweets overnight, and at the same time checks up on the children to see if they were good, polite and helpful the last year. If they were not, they…
The Federal Court of Australia has handed down its first detailed damages decision in a long time in a patent infringement claim against a generic pharmaceutical company. In doing so, it sets a new benchmark for damages claims by innovator companies whose products have been illegally copied. In Bayer Pharma Aktiengesellschaft v Generic Health Pty…
On 25 January 2017, the CJEU handed down a very interesting judgment in case C-367/15, concluding that Article 13 of Directive EC 2004/48 (better known as “the Enforcement Directive”) does not prevent a national regulation from stating that when an intellectual property right (“IPR”) has been infringed, the IPR owner may claim an amount corresponding…
