Friday, December 2, 2011

Willful Infringement Warrants Only $500,000 Enhancement Over $22.35 Million Verdict

On remand, the court reconsidered its earlier denial of plaintiff's motion for enhanced damages and instead awarded plaintiff $500,000 on the jury's award of $22.35 million. "On appeal in this case, the Federal Circuit held, in light of its intervening opinion in i4i Limited Partnership v. Microsoft Corp., 598 F.3d 831 (Fed. Cir. 2010), that this Court had misapplied [In re Seagate Tech., LLC, 497 F.3d 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2007)] Specifically, the Federal Circuit said that 'Seagate did not change the application of the Read factors with respect to enhancement of damages' for willful infringement. . . . Only two factors — the infringer’s investigation into the infringement allegations (factor 2) and the infringer’s size and financial condition (factor 4) — weigh in favor of awarding enhanced damages. On balance, the Court finds that [defendant] should be penalized by an award of $500,000 in enhanced damages. . . . [T]he Court notes that the disparity between this award and the jury’s compensatory-damages award reflects not just that the Court’s enhanced-damages award is relatively small, but also that the compensatory-damages award was extremely generous."

Spectralytics, Inc. v. Cordis Corporation, 0-05-cv-01464 (MND November 30, 2011, Order) (Schiltz, J.)

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