A Blog About Intellectual Property Litigation and the District of Delaware


Entries for tag: § 284

Dice
Mike Szczepanski, Unsplash

It's funny—for all the massive amounts of time spent litigating willfulness in patent cases, and the big evidentiary impact it can have, we don't get opinions addressing whether the Court will actually enhance damages all that often.

Yesterday, Judge Andrews issued a post-trial opinion addressing enhancement of damages after a willfulness finding. He applied the well-known Read factors to determine whether to enhance damages, noting that they are still persuasive even though they are no longer required after the Supreme Court's more recent Halo opinion.

Here's how the factors panned out, including whether they weighed in favor of or against enhancement of damages

  1. No copying by the defendant, weighs against
  2. Willfulness verdict, weighs in favor …

Triple Damages
Marcel Eberle, Unsplash

We've written a lot on the developing case law in Delaware around willfulness and motions to dismiss. Willfulness requires knowledge of the infringement, and some of our judges have dismissed willfulness claims because the filing of a complaint for patent infringement cannot serve as the basis of knowledge of infringement.

Today, Judge Andrews followed that case law, and dismissed a willfulness claim in an amended complaint, stating that the original complaint cannot serve as a basis for establishing knowledge:

iFIT also alleges that Peloton knew of the '407 patent as of the filing of its original complaint. . . . I think this is irrelevant. My view is that an amended complaint cannot rely upon the …