From Around the Blogs and Elsewhere

 1.  On Bloomberg Law, Matthew Bultman published an article titled Investors Eye Patents After "Extraordinary" Damage Awards Run.  The article notes that there have been seven U.S. patent damages awards in excess of $100 million of the past twelve months, and states that "[p]atents have piqued the interest of investors, including hedge funds and private equity firms, looking for recession-proof assets . . . ."  The article quotes, among others, Professor Amy Landers.

2.  On Law360, Daniel Moffett, Clayton Matheson, and Dorian Ojemen published an article titled Overlooked Patent Cases:  Scrutiny of Damage Apportionment.  The article discusses some recent U.S. cases which, as the authors put it, "suggest that district courts are becoming increasingly skeptical of a damages expert's ability to reliably translate qualitative evidence about an invention's technical benefits into an assessment of its economic value."

3.  On IP Watchdog, Steve Brachmann published an article titled China's Legislature Approves Increases to Statutory Patent Damages, Maximum 5x Punitive Damages for Intentional Infringement.  (For previous discussion on this blog, see here.)  Although the author states that "China continues to signal its willingness to embrace stronger rights for patent owners," he also notes that "these patent law revisions . . . will only provide very modest damages in patent cases relative to other jurisdictions, especially the United States." 

4.  On Sufficient Description, Norman Siebrasse published five posts last month on Nova Chemicals Corp. v. Dow Chemicals Co., 2020 FCA 141 (which I briefly noted here), an important decision from Canada's Federal Court of Appeal on the remedy of disgorgement of profits.  They are: (1) Nova v Dow: A Radical Departure from Established Law; (2) Constructing the “But For” World Is Not a Purely Subjective Inquiry; (3) Non-Infringing Baseline as an Alternative to “But For” Causation; (4) Deduction of Fixed Costs in Nova v Dow; and (5) Fixed Costs and Sunk Costs.  I concur with Professor Siebrasse's critique of the Nova decision, and strongly commend these posts to readers' attention.  They're long and intricately reasoned, but well worth your time.