It is always important to take the pulse of your industry at the end of the year, delving deeper into important topics that were not urgent during the year but that gradually help shape your business practice. That is why we are glad to see IMS Expert Services’ December issue of BullsEye reviewing the top ten cases of the year relating to expert witness testimony.
In this post we highlight another intellectual property infringement damages expert witness case, this time in the context of patent litigation. The law is not precise enough when it comes to the calculation of reasonable royalties as a measure of damages for patent infringement. In our experience, this is an area where the choice of expert witness is definitive and the multitude of factors, case-specific considerations combine to challenge the damages calculation and the presentation of the expert’s testimony.
As BullsEye points out, “…The heat got turned up even higher this year when the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a $500,000 reasonable-royalty award, ruling that the expert testimony on which it was based was speculative and unreliable.
“Because the district court’s award relied on speculative and unreliable evidence divorced from proof of economic harm linked to the claimed invention and is inconsistent with sound damages jurisprudence, this court vacates the damages award and remands,” the Federal Circuit said…”
Read more at: IMS BullsEye December 2010.
Case: ResQNet.com, Inc. v. Lansa, Inc., 594 F.3d 860 (Fed. Cir. 2010).