Sweat the Small Stuff: Lessons of Federal Circuit Damages Cases

Six Federal Circuit decisions on patent damages this year show the importance of details in cases involving issues such as marking, interest accrual, and awards calculation.

The decisions show “how important small things can be,” said Tom Cotter, intellectual property professor at the University of Minnesota Law School who blogs about patent remedies.

The marking cases, for instance, are “probably rather obscure even to many people in the IP world,” Cotter said. But patent owners limit their damages if they don’t comply with the statute’s technicalities, he said in an email.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ...