Willful infringement and enhanced damages Avoiding willful infringement is important because a court has the discretion to increase damages up to three times and award attorney’s fees if the patent is willfully infringed  Exculpatory opinions of counsel regarding non infringement of a patent reduce the likelihood that a defendant would be found liable for willfully [...]

The claims section of a patent defines the metes and bounds of what the inventor is claiming as their invention.  As such, the claims section is an important part of the patent. The claim set is the most difficult section of the patent to draft because it is always a balancing act between breadth and [...]

Due diligence in searching for a competitor’s patents at the beginning of the design and manufacturing process may save more money in the long run since it is typically less expensive to make adjustments to a product earlier on during the design and manufacturing process than to make changes to avoid infringement after launch of a product.

Once a patent issues, the patentee has a right to demand that others infringing on the claimed invention stop using, selling, offering for sale, manufacturing and importing the claimed invention into the United States. While not required, one of the first steps involved in exercising the patentee’s rights may involve sending a cease and desist [...]

In Ricoh Company, Ltd. v. Quanta Computer, Inc., 2007-1567, (Fed. Cir. 2008), Quanta sold computer drives having various components.  For the purposes of this case, one of those components was specially designed to infringe Ricoh’s patent.  Although the computer drive itself did not directly infringe the Ricoh patent, Ricoh contends that Quanta should be held [...]