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6/25/16-  At the 7^th Annual  VidCon in Anaheim, CA , Weintraub Tobin Shareholder Scott M. Hervey and Rian Bosak, Head of Network Operations Full Screen, presented  “Fair Use and Youtube- A Creator’s Take” to a standing room only audience of digital media creators and industry professionals.  Check out their presentation below:

Up until now, it has been nearly impossible for a plaintiff to recover enhanced (up to treble) damages in patent infringement cases.  The current test for enhanced damages, set forth by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in 2007 in In Re Seagate Technology, LLC, 497 F.3d 1360 (2007), was so rigid that it essentially slammed the door on plaintiffs seeking enhanced damages.  On June 13, 2016, however, the Supreme Court decision changed all that, in a unanimous decision in Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics, 2016 U.S. LEXIS 3776 (June 13, 2016).  The Court opened the door for plaintiffs to recover enhanced damages – no one is sure yet how far – but it is clear that plaintiffs have been given a boost and would-be infringers a cause for anxiety.

In Halo, the Court made three rulings that affect patent infringement suits.  First, the Court changed the test for recovery of enhanced damages from a rigid test to a flexible one.  Second, the Court lowered the plaintiff’s burden of proof for enhanced damages.  Third, the Court eased the standard of appellate review of district courts’ decisions on enhanced damages, leaving the district courts with more discretion and making it more difficult for defendants to overturn awards of enhanced damages.

The patent laws permit a trial court, in its discretion, to award enhanced damages to a plaintiff who prevails in a patent infringement suit.  35 U.S.C. § 284.  In Seagate, the Federal Circuit held that in order to obtain enhanced damages under § 284, a plaintiff had to prove willful infringement.  The court established a two-part test for willfulness.  The first part is objective – the plaintiff must show that there was an objectively high likelihood that the defendant’s actions were infringing.  This part of the test, referred to as “objective recklessness,” is determined by the judge based on the record, and cannot be found if the defendant raises a substantial question during the litigation as to noninfringement or invalidity.  The second part of the Seagate test is subjective – the plaintiff must show that the defendant knew or should have known that its actions were risking infringement.  The Seagate court held that a plaintiff must prove both parts of the test by clear and convincing evidence.  In Seagate, the court also established three different standards for appellate review: de novo for objective recklessness, substantial evidence for subjective knowledge, and abuse of discretion for the decision to award enhanced damages.

The Supreme Court’s Halo decision is a single decision issued in two cases:  Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics and Stryker Corp v. Zimmer, Inc.  In the Halo case, plaintiff Halo and defendant Pulse competed in electronic components.  Halo owned patents for electronic packages with transformers used to attach to circuit boards.  Halo offered Pulse the opportunity to license the patents.  Pulse declined and continued to sell the accused products, after deciding that the patents were not valid.  Halo sued Pulse.  The jury found that Pulse had infringed the patents and that the infringement was likely willful.  Halo sought enhanced damages, but the district court denied the request on the grounds that Pulse had asserted a defense at trial that was not baseless, such that the first part of the Seagate test could not be met.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed.

In Stryker, Stryker and Zimmer competed in the sale of an orthopedic surgical device.  Stryker sued Zimmer for patent infringement, and won a jury verdict of $70 million for willful infringement.  The willfulness was based on evidence that Zimmer had flagrantly decided to copy Stryker’s products.  The district court awarded an additional $6.1 million in damages and trebled the award, for a total of over $228 million.  On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed the finding of infringement, but reversed the award of treble damages, relying on the same rationale as in the Halo case, that the defendant had presented reasonable defenses at trial, such that the first part of the Seagate test could not be met.

The Supreme Court explained that § 284 provides a district court with discretion to award enhanced damages and does not specifically limit that discretion.  Halo, at *14.  However, the Court emphasized that the district court’s discretion should only be exercised in “egregious” cases.  Id. at *15.  Egregious cases are those in which the defendant’s conduct is “wanton, malicious, bad-faith, deliberate, consciously wrongful, flagrant, or . . . characteristic of a pirate.”  Id. 

In tossing out the Seagate test, the Court said that the first part of the Seagate test – objective recklessness – is wrong because it excludes defendants who wantonly infringe a patent, but later, during litigation, assert a defense that they may not even have known existed at the time of the infringement.  Id. at *16-17.  According to the Court, “someone who plunders a patent – infringing it without any reason to suppose his conduct is arguably defensible – can nevertheless escape any comeuppance under §284 solely on the strength of his attorney’s ingenuity.”  Id. at *17.  The Court found no basis under §284 for a threshold requirement of objective recklessness, holding that a defendant’s culpability should be “measured against the knowledge of the actor at the time of the challenged conduct.”  Id.  The Court further found that the high burden of proof of clear and convincing evidence was inappropriate and not consistent with § 284.  Id. at *20.

The Court set forth the proper test for enhanced damages, at *19:

“[C]ourts should continue to take into account the particular circumstances of each case in deciding whether to award damages, and in what amount.  Section 284 permits district courts to exercise their discretion in a manner free from the inelastic constraints of the Seagate test.  Consistent with nearly two centuries of enhanced damages under patent law, however, such punishment should generally be reserved for egregious cases typified by willful misconduct.”

Thus, in discarding the Seagate test, the Court did not replace it with a new test.  Instead, the Court simply held that the Seagate test is “unduly confining” and that district courts should “be guided by sound legal principles developed over nearly two centuries of application and interpretation of the Patent Act . . . [and limit] the award of enhanced damages to egregious cases of misconduct beyond typical infringement.”  Id. at *24.

Lastly, the Court changed the standard of review of a district court’s decision on enhanced damages.  The Court held that because the district court has full discretion to award enhanced damages, its discretion should be subject to a single standard of review, abuse of discretion.

Halo has significant ramifications for patent owners and potential infringers, and for patent litigation itself.  Among them are:

• Because the test is now more flexible and because the plaintiff’s burden of proof is lower, there may be more patent infringement cases filed.
• Because the accused infringer may face allegations of willfulness that will likely survive to trial, cease and desist letters from patent owners to accused infringers may carry more weight.
• Because the test is now determined by the defendant’s conduct at the time of the infringing acts, plaintiffs may conduct more extensive discovery into the defendant’s knowledge and when the defendant had that knowledge.
• Without the benefit of the objective recklessness part of the Seagate test, defendants will have a more difficult time obtaining summary judgment of no willfulness; thus, the issue of willfulness and the plaintiff’s supporting evidence of the defendants willfulness will be presented at trial.
• Because defendants will not want to risk evidence of willfulness at trial and an award of enhanced damages, settlement discussions will become more important, and more cases may settle before trial.
• Because the “new” test is more flexible and because the burden of proof on the plaintiff is lower than under Seagate, plaintiffs may be more likely to recover enhanced damages at trial.
• Because the test is now determined by the defendant’s conduct at the time of the infringing acts, companies developing new technology may become more diligent in conducting early infringement and invalidity analyses of key patents in their industry.
• For the same reason, defendants may become more cautious in how they conduct themselves during the development of new technology, and in the written records of their conduct.

While most view Halo as very favorable to patent owners, its effect will not be known until the district courts start applying the test and the Federal Circuit rules on their decisions.  Until that time, potential infringers may not really know what type of conduct will result in enhanced damages, and should act accordingly.

Patent litigators and prosecutors have been waiting to hear whether the U.S. Supreme Court would require the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) to apply the same claim construction standard as the district courts.  The answer is “No.”

For over 100 years, the USPTO has used the “broadest reasonable construction” standard to interpret patent claims.  But the district courts apply a different standard, which gives claims their ordinary meaning as understood by a person of skill in the art.  Questions have arisen as to whether it makes sense for these standards to be different.  In its ruling on June 20, 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court addressed this question as it relates to an inter partes review (“IPR”), which is a procedure created by the America Invents Act, 35 U.S.C. §100 et seq.   The IPR procedure allows someone other than the patent owner to petition the USPTO to review claims of an issued patent and cancel claims that are found to be unpatentable in light of prior art.  The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (“PTAB”) handles IPR petitions and reviews at the USPTO.

In 2012, Garmin International, Inc., and Garmin USA, Inc., filed an IPR petition seeking to invalidate the claims of Cuozzo Speed Technologies, LLC’s patent relating to speedometers that alert drivers when they exceed the speed limit.  Among other requests, Garmin asked the USPTO to review claim 17 in light of three prior art patents.  Claim 17 depended from claims 10 and 14.  While Garmin had not expressly challenged claims 10 and 14, the USPTO granted the petition as to all three claims explaining that claims 10 and 14 were implicitly challenged.  The PTAB concluded that these claims were obvious in light of the prior art, denied Cuozzo’s motion to amend the claims as futile, and cancelled the claims.  Cuozzo appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit arguing 1) the PTAB improperly applied the “broadest reasonable construction” standard instead of the district courts’ standard, and 2) the USPTO improperly instituted review of claims 10 and 14 because Garmin had not challenged those claims “with particularity.”  The Federal Circuit rejected both arguments.  The Supreme Court granted certiorari and affirmed.  The Court found that the USPTO has the authority to issue a reasonable rule specifying the standard for claim construction and that the broadest reasonable construction standard is a reasonable rule.  Further, the Court found that 35 U.S.C. §314(d) precludes appeal of the USPTO’s decision to institute review of claims 10 and 14.

In considering the claim construction standard, the Court considered Cuozzo’s argument that the USPTO did not have the authority to issue a regulation instructing that in inter partes review, the PTAB “shall [construe a patent claim according to] its broad­est reasonable construction in light of the specification of the patent in which it appears” 37 CFR §42.100(b)(2015).  Cuozzo argued that the PTAB should be required to apply the same claim construction standard used by the district courts.  The Supreme Court, however, disagreed citing §316(a)(4) of the statute, which grants the USPTO authority to issue “regulations … establish­ing and governing inter partes review.”  The Court explained that the statute contains a gap because it does not unambiguously tell the USPTO what claim construction standard to use.  Where a statute is ambiguous or leaves a gap, the Court pointed out that it typ­ically interprets the statute “as giv­ing the agency leeway to enact rules that are reasonable in light of the text, nature, and purpose of the statute.”

The Court was not persuaded by Cuozzo’s argument that Congress must have designed IPR proceedings as a “surrogate for court proceedings,” and thus must have intended the USPTO to use the same standard as the district courts.  The Court reasoned that in other ways IPR proceedings are more like a specialized agency proceeding than a judicial proceeding.  For example, parties initiating the proceedings do not have to have a stake in the outcome, petitioners may lack constitutional standing and need not remain in the proceeding, and the Patent Office may intervene in a later judicial proceeding to defend its decision.  In addition, the burden of proof to cancel claims in an IPR is preponderance of the evidence, whereas in district court, a challenger must prove invalidity by clear and convincing evidence, which is a higher standard.  Further, “neither the statutory language, its purpose, or its history suggest that Congress considered what standard the [USPTO] should apply … in inter partes review.”  Therefore, the Court found that the USPTO has the authority to enact reasonable rules specifying the claim construction standard to fill this gap in the statute.

The Court then turned to the question of whether the rule is a reasonable exercise of that authority.  The Court noted that “the broadest reasonable construction helps to protect the public.”  It encourages patent applicants to draft claims narrowly, which promotes “precision while avoiding overly broad claims” and “helps prevent a patent from tying up too much knowledge” while helping the public “draw useful information from the disclosed invention and better understand the lawful limits of the claim.”  The Court also noted that past practice at the USPTO supports use of the broadest reasonable construction.

Cuozzo argued that there is a critical difference between the initial examination of a patent and the examination during an IPR that supports use of the district courts’ standard.  In an initial examination, the examiner applies the broadest reasonable construction, and if claims are rejected, the applicant can amend them as a matter of right.  In contrast, there is no absolute right to amend claims during an IPR.  Instead, amendment requires a motion, which has rarely been granted.  But the Court did not find this argument persuasive.  Instead, the Court found that use of the broadest reasonable construction was not unfair in any obvious way because there is an opportunity to amend during an IPR, albeit rarely granted, and the “original application process may have presented several additional opportunities to amend” the patent claims.

Cuozzo also argued that the use of one standard in IPR proceedings before the PTAB and a different standard in district courts “may produce inconsistent results and cause added confusion.” A district court could find a patent claim valid, and then the USPTO could later cancel the claim in its review.  The Court noted that that possibility “has long been present in our patent system, which provides different tracks … for the review and adjudication of patent claims.”  Given that inter partes review imposes a different burden of proof than that of the district courts, “the possibility of inconsistent results is inherent to Congress’ regulatory design.”  Further, the USPTO uses the broadest reasonable construction in other proceedings, which may be consolidated with inter partes review.  Thus, the Court could not find it unreasonable that the patent office prefers “a degree of inconsistency between the courts and the [USPTO] rather than among [USPTO] proceedings.”

Therefore, according to the Supreme Court, the PTAB and district courts can continue to apply different standards for interpreting patent claims.  Thus, when seeking to invalidate claims, patent challengers will likely continue to favor IPRs because of the broadest reasonable construction standard and the lower burden of proof.