Is The Tide Turning In Defendants' Favor? Evidence from Recent Judgments in Patent Infringement Cases
1 December 2000
By Dr. Phillip Beutel
Have thirty-plus years of reliance on economic principles to compensate patent holders for the theft of their intellectual property resulted in damage awards favoring plaintiffs? In a word, "no."
Dr. Phillip Beutel, NERA Senior Vice President, has researched the impact of the Court's steady embrace of economic rationality by considering several important patent infringement damage award decisions. Aggregate data collected by the Federal Judicial Center was analyzed to determine whether, with each decision, the Court's use of economics when determining damages favored plaintiffs or defendants.
The conclusion: there is an ebb and flow with respect to its tilt towards plaintiffs, with current "trend" favoring defendants more than plaintiffs.
