In this roundtable discussion, NERA Senior Vice President Dr. Alan Cox and Vice President Bryan Ray explore the underlying economics of the proposed changes to how patent damages should be determined. Those changes are embodied in the Patent Reform Act of 2007, which passed the US House of Representatives earlier this year. Similar legislation is currently being considered by the US Senate. The discussants—who have extensive experience in analyzing patent infringement damages—examine the economics of reasonable royalty determination and exchange their views on four key topics: the extent to which the proposed legislation will change current practice; how to interpret the legislative language relating to “contribution over prior art” and the “entire market value rule;” whether the legislation will create problems; and, in the end, whether the legislation “gets the economics right.”

A version of this paper was published in the Global Intellectual Property Asset Management Report, Volume 9, Number 12, December 2007. Download published article here.