Seagate held that a plaintiff must show willful infringement in order to recover treble damages and set forth a two-part test for establishing such willfulness. In re Seagate Tech., LLC, 497 F.3d 1360 (Fed. In 2007, the Federal Circuit issued the Seagate decision establishing the standard for recovering enhanced damages for patent infringement. Seagate and Federal Circuit Precedent regarding Enhanced Damages

Therefore, it may be beneficial to obtain an opinion of counsel before manufacturing or selling certain products to help demonstrate that any adjudged infringement was not intentional and instead was based on a subjective belief of noninfringement at the time the products were manufactured and/or sold. The Court in Halo repeatedly indicated that the focus of an enhanced damages inquiry should be the accused infringer’s intent at the time of the infringement. Nevertheless, the change of the test for awarding enhanced damages has left some uncertainty for future infringement cases. However, the Supreme Court in Halo tried to offset this by making it clear that enhanced damages should be reserved only for cases of “egregious infringement.” Moving ahead, it should be more difficult to prove enhanced damages in cases where the defendant’s conduct was not egregious. The Court considered the potential policy ramifications of allowing district courts discretion to award enhanced damages in patent cases, but nevertheless held that such concern did not justify imposing the strict requirements of Seagate on the discretion of the courts.Īt first glance, Halo appears to make it easier to prove enhanced damages by eliminating the requirement of “objective recklessness” and leaving the decision whether to grant enhanced damages solely within the “discretion” of the district courts.

In particular, the Court held that a finding of “objective recklessness” should not be required in every case and that subjective willfulness alone may warrant enhanced damages. 14-1513), the Supreme Court held that the Seagate test is “unduly rigid” and is inconsistent with 35 U.S.C. Supreme Court struck down the Federal Circuit’s test for enhanced damages under In re Seagate.

Transdata patent lawsuit