By Karen Romrell (November 28, 2017, 1:10 PM EST) -- In an endeavor to determine a reasonable royalty for an infringed patent, damage experts using a hypothetical negotiation should carefully consider other license and settlement agreements. In August 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit concluded that the probative value of a dubious settlement agreement was outweighed by the risk of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, and misleading the jury.[1] In March 2017, the Federal Circuit noted in its Prism Technologies LLC v. Sprint Spectrum LP decision that "what is needed for assessing the probativeness and prejudice ...is consideration of various aspects of the particular litigation settlements."[2] On Nov. 6, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Sprint's appeal, upholding Prism's damages award. This article discusses various aspects of prior licenses and settlement agreements as set forth in Prism v. Sprint, along with other recent court decisions, to assist damage experts in determining a reasonable royalty, specifically (1) whether to rely on other license agreements, (2) whether to use other agreements as a reasonableness check, and (3) how to identify differences between other license agreements and the subject litigation....