A Brief History Of Unreasonable Royalties

Law360, New York (July 21, 2014, 11:00 AM EDT) -- While patent infringement causes a legal harm to a patentee, it does not cause actual harm in every instance. Historically, absent proof of "actual loss," only nominal damages were awarded.[1] The same is true for the analogous tort of trespass on land. Unless some actual damage occurs to the land or landowner due to the trespass, no more than nominal damages would be owed.[2] Yet today patentees who suffer no actual harm (most notably, patent assertion entities) are regularly obtaining considerable amounts of money from infringers as purported "reasonable royalty" damages. This state of affairs reveals a need for a fresh reading of the pertinent damages law....

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