U.S. Supreme Court Curbs Excessive Design Patent Damages
Once again the Supreme Court has stepped in to curb the Federal Circuit Court and bring a level-headed interpretation to the relevant statute defining how damages are computed for infringing patent rights to a component that is part of a larger article of sale.<p>The precise legal issue involved here is primarily of interest to the immediate parties to the dispute (and, of course, similarly situated parties dealing with like claims). It is not a legal issue that stirs much public debate.<p>Yet the reining in of the Federal Circuit has major public consequences. The Federal Circuit basically has been on on a bender for the past 20+ years in interpreting the patent laws such that basically everything under the sun became patentable with the enforcement rights of patent holders utterly maximized. This led to the plethora of software and other process patents that has caused so many to throw up their hands in despair and to conclude that all patents are evil and should be abolished. Whether they should or not is a policy question for which there are decent arguments on both sides, in my view. But, assuming one agrees that patent protection can be useful for the right cases, the law is now coming around much more to the point where far more defensible patents are being granted, upheld and enforced and where such enforcement is more reasonably tailored to the purposes of patent law as envisioned in the U.S. Constitution. And that is a very good thing.<p>Apple is and has for years been very aggressive in attacking competitors with patent claims. In this case, their patent was upheld and the question remained as to how much they had been injured. With this decision, the U.S. Supreme Court helps ensure that Apple will get compensation but not a windfall for the wrong done to it.<p>Patent law may be right or it may be wrong in a social-justice sense but, as far as the U.S. law is concerned, if it is to be upheld and enforced at all, it should be done in a way that actually furthers its proper purposes and not in a way that promotes shakedown suits and opportunistic legal claims. So kudos to the Supreme Court for getting it right and for putting proper bounds on patent laws in general in a way that helps bring sanity to the field.