Washington and Lee law professor Christopher Seaman’s article, Ongoing Royalties in Patent Cases After eBay: An Empirical Assessment and Proposed Framework, recently appeared in the symposium issue of volume 23 of the Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal. The Professor Seaman’s article is also featured on SSRN top ten lists in four different subject areas: Intellectual Property, Intellectual Property: Empirical Studies, Innovation & Patent Law & Policy, and Innovation Policy Studies.
From the abstract:
The Supreme Court’s landmark decision in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 288 (2006), significantly changed the remedial landscape for patent owners, holding that a permanent injunction would not automatically follow a finding that an asserted patent was infringed and not invalid. As a result, a substantial number of prevailing patentees have been denied the ability to exclude future acts of infringement. eBay’s impact is perhaps most acute for patent assertion entities (“PAEs”) — firms that own, license, and assert patents in litigation, but do not themselves directly practice the patented technology — who rarely can satisfy eBay’s four-factor test.
In eBay’s wake, the Federal Circuit has approved an alternative prospective remedy called an ongoing royalty. But despite lower courts’ increasing use of this remedy, numerous questions about the structure and methodology for determining an ongoing royalty remain unresolved. This Article addresses the issue of ongoing royalty awards from both an empirical and doctrinal perspective. First, it reports the results of an original empirical study regarding ongoing royalty awards by district courts since eBay. Second, it proposes a new framework for computing an ongoing royalty that requires consideration of actual or anticipated changes to the relevant product market, as well as potential future alternatives to the patented technology, in determining the amount of an ongoing royalty award.
Download the full text of Professor Seaman’s article from SSRN here.
