Crossing the Border: Federal Circuit Confirms Patent Owner’s Ability to Recover a Reasonable Royalty Based on Foreign Activity
Highlights
Patent owners may seek reasonable royalty damages based on foreign activity in connection with domestic acts of infringement
A patent owner must establish the causal relationship between any foreign conduct on which damages are based and acts of infringement within the U.S.
The ways a patent owner can show proximate cause in the context of a reasonable royalty analysis to capture foreign activity is an open issue that will require navigating fundamental tenets of patent law and the standards that guide damages
On March 27, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion in Brumfield, Trustee for Ascent Trust v. IBG LLC,(1) clarifying the scope of potentially available damages based on foreign conduct in patent cases. Specifically, the court held that if a causal relationship between a domestic act of infringement and the foreign conduct is established, a patent owner can obtain reasonable royalty damages based on that foreign activity.
Keep Up to Date in a Changing World
