Willful patent infringement: the first year of the post-Seagate era

The authors explain in this article that when the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its en banc opinion last summer in In re Seagate Technology LLC, it was widely assumed that the decision would radically change the legal landscape with respect to alleging, proving, and defending claim...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Intellectual property & technology law journal 2008-09, Vol.20 (9), p.11
Main Authors: Anderson, Carl G, Lawson, Scott G, Baily, Melissa J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attorneys
Computer industry
Confidential communications
District courts
Federal court decisions
Infringement
Laws, regulations and rules
Patent infringement
Privileged communication
Recklessness (Law)
State court decisions
Trials
Work product privilege (Law)
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Summary:The authors explain in this article that when the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued its en banc opinion last summer in In re Seagate Technology LLC, it was widely assumed that the decision would radically change the legal landscape with respect to alleging, proving, and defending claims of willful patent infringement. Among the most common predictions were that, in the post-Seagate era, claims of willful infringement would be increasingly hard to prevail on, that the number of willfulness claims would significantly decrease, and that the advice-of-counsel defense would largely disappear. The authors observe that, with the benefit of a year's hindsight, implementation of Seagate's holdings by trial courts has been less than consistent from district to district and court to court. However, it is clear that, in the wake of Seagate, district courts are focusing far less on a defendant's specific pre-litigation knowledge and inquiry and more on objective criteria, including the relative "closeness" of the infringement case, in analyzing willfulness.
ISSN:1534-3618