Friday, February 4, 2022

Two New Federal Circuit Opinions on Damages

I will not have time to blog about these today, but I will have more to say about them next week.  The first is Apple Inc. v. Wi-Lan Inc., holding that, because of what the court refers to as "methodological and factual errors" in Wi-Lan's expert's opinion relating to comparable licenses, the district court abused its discretion in denying Apple's request for a new trial on damages.  The $85 million damages award is vacated and remanded.  The second is California Institute of Technology v. Broadcom Ltd.  In a complex opinion, the court (inter alia) vacates and remands a billion-dollar plus damages award premised on a "two-tier" damages theory, but affirms a jury instruction that--if I am understanding it correctly, I'll need to look at the briefs to be sure--might permit an award of extraterritorial damages caused by acts of domestic infringement (consistent with what I have argued is the correct reading of WesternGeco).  (More important, perhaps, is the latter opinion's overruling of previous Federal Circuit case law on IPR estoppel.)  More next week. 

Update:  I may have read too much into the discussion of extraterritoriality in Cal. Tech.  I got copies, from Pacer, of the public versions of the appellants' and appellee's opening briefs (see pp. 63-66 and 57-62, respectively) and the appellants' reply brief (see pp. 30-32), and it appears that the dispute centered on whether Broadcom's sales of close to one billion infringing chips occurred in the U.S. or abroad--rather than on whether some initial infringing activity in the U.S. caused additional sales abroad.  I wish the Court of Appeals had been a little more clear on this, though.

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