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Into the Fray: Lucent Ruling Makes It Harder to Prove Patent Damages 

Reversing the award in Lucent v. Gateway, the Federal Circuit raises the standard for patent damages.

Published in the 12/1/2009  Issue of InsideCounsel.

Industries at Odds 

Pharmaceutical and biotech companies use patents differently than software and IT companies do. That’s why these industries have clashed so strongly over patent damages.

A blockbuster drug or biotech product is likely to be based on a handful of extremely valuable patents. Thus the companies that make these products want to maintain high damage awards.

A successful software or IT product, by contrast, typically contains a huge number of different components—sometimes numbering in the hundreds of thousands—and each of these components may be covered by a different patent. Companies that make these products want lower damage awards to reflect the lesser importance of these individual patents.


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