The Supreme Court's Decision in Microsoft v. i4i - No Change

In Microsoft Corp. v. i4i, 10-200, the Supreme Court considered the issue of the appropriate standard of proof that is applicable when a party seeks to invalidate a patent.  The Federal Circuit has consistently held that the presumption of validity imposed a clear and convincing evidence standard.  Moreover, this standard applied even when the prior art relied upon by the defendant was not previously considered by the patent office.  Microsoft argued that the preponderance of evidence standard should apply to invalidity defenses, at least in those cases where a defendant presented evidence that was not considered by the patent office.  The Supreme Court rejected this argument and has unequivically held that the clear and convincing standard applies to assertions of patent invalidity.  In short, the decision can be summed up in two words - No Change.  

And that concludes the patent law Supreme Court Watch for this term.

25% “Rule of Thumb” Rejected in Determining Patent Damages

Over the last several years, we have seen more and more damages experts rely on a so-called "25% rule" as a starting point in determining a “reasonable royalty” in patent cases. The 25% rule was applied as a “rule of thumb” that  allowed an accused infringer to retain 75% of the profits and awarded 25% of the infringer's profits to the patent holder. This 25% figure would typically be used as a starting point that would then be massaged using the Georgia Pacific factors to arrive at some final royalty rate, that was often very close to the 25% value. The problem with this approach is that while it sounds like a “reasonable” division of profits at some superficial level, and is certainly expedient in arriving at some starting point for analysis, it is universally divorced from reality in any specific case. Nonetheless, the 25% rule kept finding its way into articles, court decisions and expert reports...until now.

In Uniloc USA v. Microsoft Corp., 2010-1035, a case involving a patent on a software registration and copy protection system for products such as Microsoft Word, the Federal Circuit squarely rejected the use of this analytical fiction as being improper under Daubert. The Court held that:

This court now holds as a matter of Federal Circuit law that the 25 percent rule of thumb is a fundamentally flawed tool for determining a baseline royalty rate in a hypothetical negotiation. Evidence relying on the 25 percent rule of thumb is thus inadmissible under Daubert and the Federal Rules of Evidence, because it fails to tie a reasonable royalty base to the facts of the case at issue. Opinion at 41

         
In criticizing the 25% rule, the court pointed out that “[t]he  rule does not say anything about a particular hypothetical negotiation or reasonable royalty involving any particular technology, industry, or party."  

The Court recognized that the 25% rule was being used as a "starting point" rather than a final calculation but found that this made no difference: 

In short, Gemini’s starting point of a 25 percent royalty had no relation to the facts of the case, and as such, was arbitrary, unreliable, and irrelevant. The use of such a rule fails to pass muster under Daubert and taints the jury’s damages calculation. Opinion at 47

The court specifically reaffirmed use of the Georgia Pacific factors as an analytical tool in determining a reasonable royalty rate but emphasized that “there must be a basis in fact to associate the royalty rates used in prior licenses to the particular hypothetical negotiation at issue in the case.”
The Court also rejected Uniloc’s use of the “entire market rule” as a “check” to show how the royalty rate  arrived at using the 25% rule was "reasonable." In rejecting the use of the entire market value rule in this case, the Federal Circuit again emphasized that “damages based on the entire market value of the accused product [are appropriate] only where the patented feature creates the ‘basis for customer demand’ or ‘substantially create[s] the value of the component parts.’” The court found that Uniloc had offered no evidence that customer demand was driven by the patented software registration feature.


The elimination of the 25% rule may make the damages analysis more complicated in many cases, especially for plaintiff's experts seeking an easy way to justify a high valuation for a particular patent. It will, however, help to insure that the royalty rates that are offered by damages experts are based on facts that are applicable to the case at hand and are rationally based on the value of the patented invention.

The Supreme Court is Set to Significantly Re-Shape Patent Rights and Litigation

The Court Agrees to Hear Three Patent Cases in 2011

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear three patent cases in its upcoming term. The first case touches upon the standard for establishing intent in the context of inducement of infringement. In October, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Global-Tech Appliances Inc. v. SEB S.A. on the question of “whether the legal standard for the ‘state of mind’ element of a claim for actively inducing infringement under 35 U.S.C. 271(b) is ‘deliberate indifference of a known risk’ that an infringement may occur or instead ‘purposeful, culpable expression and conduct’ to encourage an infringement.” The difference in these standards, essentially the difference between “known” and “should have known,” will significantly effect the way that businesses deal with third party patents from the point of conducting clearance searches and obtaining opinions all the way through trial.


The second case on the Supreme Court docket is Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University v. Roche Molecular Systems. In this case, the Supreme Court will consider ownership rights to inventions that were made with government funding under the Bayh-Dole Act. Although this case addresses a fairly narrow question, it could prove to be a significant case to universities and research institutions which rely heavily on federal research grants to sponsor wide ranging research projects which are the source of many inventions.


The third case, Microsoft v. i4i Ltd. 10-290, could prove to have a fundamental impact on every patent case, as it deals with the core issue of the burden of proof for establishing invalidity of a patent claim.


On November 29, 2010, the Supreme Court granted Microsoft’s petition for a writ of certiorari on the question “did the court of appeals [for the Federal Circuit] err in holding that Microsoft’s invalidity defense must be proved by clear and convincing evidence?”  As noted in a previous posting, Microsoft's petition was supported by numerous amici.

 At trial, Microsoft’s invalidity defense was based on a lack of novelty due to a prior sale of the patentee’s own earlier software. This prior art was not before the patent office during examination and was not considered by the patent examiner. Despite the fact the patent office never had the opportunity to consider this prior art, the patent benefited from the “presumption of validity” and the district court (bound by Federal Circuit precedent) rejected Microsoft’s request for a jury instruction seeking to prove invalidity only by a “preponderance of the evidence." The Federal Circuit affirmed, setting the stage for Microsoft's petition.

The Microsoft case has the potential to significantly change the nature of patent litigation and level the playing field between plaintiffs and defendants. If the Supreme Court reduces the burden of proof for proving invalidity on issues that were not before the patent examiner to a preponderance of evidence, defendants will face a far less daunting task in establishing a successful invalidity defense. Considering the less stringent standard for establishing obviousness under the Supreme Court’s holding in KSR, lowering the burden of proof required to establish an invalidity defense would certainly reduce perceived strength of every issued patent.