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Guest post by Christopher Morten & Charles Duan

Chris Morten (@cmorten2) is the Clinical Teaching Fellow and Supervising Attorney in NYU’s Technology Law and Policy Clinic. Charles Duan (@Charles_Duan) is Director of Technology and Innovation Policy at the R Street Institute.

From vaccines to ventilators to diagnostic tests, technology has dominated response strategies to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Where technology leads, patent law and policy follow. Recently, some attention has turned to federal government patent use under 28 U.S.C. § 1498. Jamie Love of KEI has called on the federal government to explore use of section 1498 in its response to COVID-19, to reduce prices, expand supplies, and ensure widespread, equitable access to patented technologies. (We have, too.) There is a long line of scholarship, including Amy Kapczynski and Aaron Kesselheim, Hannah Brennan et al., Dennis Crouch, Daniel Cahoy, and others discussing the relevance of section 1498 in a variety of contexts.

Yet others have encouraged the government to “tread lightly” and described use of section 1498 as a “nuclear option”—potent but dangerous—because it can be used to make massive interventions in the market for patented products—e.g., by issuing compulsory licenses to patents on high-priced brand-name drugs, “breaking” patent monopolies and accelerating the entry of numerous generic competitors. One recent example: a few years ago, Gilead’s high prices on hepatitis C drugs exacerbated a different public health crisis and prompted a chorus of voices, including Senator Bernie Sanders and the New York Times editorial board, to call on the federal government to exercise its section 1498 power to “break” Gilead’s patents in just this way, which might have saved tens of billions of dollars in public spending. (The federal government did not do so.)

Irrespective of the merits of 1498 as a general matter, in the context of a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic we see real value in bold, “nuclear option” use of section 1498 to save billions on high-priced prescription drugs and maximize their availability. But that is not the only way section 1498 can be used. It can also be used in modest, incremental, unexceptional ways—it can be as much as a scalpel or a Swiss Army knife as a nuclear weapon, and some of its virtues in this regard have gone underappreciated.

Accordingly, we highlight four particularly valuable features of government patent use under section 1498 in a crisis like the present one: (1) speed, (2) flexibility, (3) ex post determination of the appropriate compensation, and (4) determination of that compensation by an impartial adjudicator. In particular, we compare section 1498 with an alternative policy tool, patent buyouts, which can also expand public access to patented technologies, and identify several reasons why section 1498 may be the preferable tool.

As I detail in my Boston University Law Review article, (Un)Reasonable Royalties, one of the big problems with using the hypothetical negotiation for calculating damages  (aside from the fact that it strains economic rationality and also has no basis in the legal history of reasonable royalties) is differences in bargaining power. The more explicit problem is when litigants try to use their bargaining power to argue that the patent owner would have agreed to a lower hypothetical rate. More implicitly, bargaining power can affect royalty rates in pre-existing (that is, comparable) licenses. This gives rise to competing claims in top 14 law reviews about whether royalty damages are spiraling up or down based on the trend of comparable licensing terms.

For what it's worth, my article dodges the spiral question, but suggests that existing licenses only be used if they can be directly tied to the value of the patented technology (and thus settlements should never be used). Patent damages experts who have read my article uniformly hate that part of it, because preexisting licenses (including settlements) are sometimes their best or even only granular source of data.

But much of this is theory. What about the data?  Gaurav Kankanhalli (Cornell Management - finance) and Alan Kwan (U. Hong Kong) have posted An Empirical Analysis of Bargaining Power in Licensing Contract Terms to SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This paper studies a new, large sample of intellectual property licensing agreements, sourced from filings by public corporations, under the lens of a surplus-bargaining framework. This framework motivates several new empirical findings on the determinants of royalty rates. We find that licensors command premium royalty rates for exclusivity (particularly in competitive industries), and for exchange of know-how. Licensors with differentiated technology and high market power charge higher royalty rates, while larger-than-rival licensees pay lower rates. Finally, using this framework, we study how the nature of disclosure by public firms affects transaction value. Firms transact at lower royalty rates when they redact contracts, preserving pricing power for future negotiations. This suggests that practitioners modeling fair value in transfer pricing and litigation contexts based on publicly-known comparables are over-estimating royalties, potentially impacting substantial cumulative transaction value.

The paper uses SEC reported licenses (more on that below), but one clever twist is that they obtained redacted terms via FOIA requests, so they could both expand their dataset and also see what types of terms are missing. They model the following transactions. Every firm has the most they are willing to pay, and the least they are willing to accept. If those two overlap, then the parties will agree to some price in the middle that splits the surplus.  Where that price is set is based on bargaining power. The authors then hypothesize what types of characteristics will affect that price, and most of them are borne out.

They focus on several kinds of bargaining power contract characteristics, firm specific characteristics, technology characteristics and license characteristics. I'm not sure I would call all of these bargaining power, as they do. I think some relate more to the value of the thing being licensed. Technically this will affect the division of surplus, but it's not really the type of bargaining power I think about. So long as the effect on license value is clear, however, the results are helpful for use in patent cases regardless of the technical designation.

So, for example, universities, non-profits, and individuals receive lower rates because they  have no credible BATNA for self-commercialization. They argue that this sheds light on conventional wisdom that individuals produce less valuable inventions. Further, firms in weaker financial condition do worse, and firms with more pricing power among their rivals do better.

On the other hand, licenses including know-how or exclusivity receive higher royalties, while amendments typically lead to lower royalties (presumably due to underperformance). I don't consider this to be bargaining power, but rather added value. That said, the authors test exclusivity and find that that highly competitive industries have higher royalties for exclusivity than non-competitive industries, which implies a mix of both bargaining power and value in competition.

The authors do look at technological value and find, unsurprisingly, that substitutability leads to lower rates.

The paper points to one interesting combination, though: territorial restrictions. Contracts with territorial restrictions have higher rates. You would think they have lower rates because the license covers less. But the contrary implication here is that a territorial restriction is imposed where the owner has the leverage to impose it, and that means a higher rate. That could be due to value or bargaining power, I suppose. I wonder, though, how many expert reports say that a royalty rate should be greater because the comparable license only covered a territory. Any readers who want to chime in would be appreciated.

There is a definite selection effect here, though, which further implies that use of preexisting licenses gathered via SEC filings be treated carefully. First, the authors note that there is a selection effect in the redactions. They find that not only are lower rates redacted, but that these redactions are driven by non-exclusive licenses, because firms want to hide their lowest willingness to sell (reservation) price. This finding is as valuable as the rest, in my opinion. It means, as the authors note, that any reliance on reported licenses may be over-weighting. It also means, in terms of my own views, that the hypothetical negotiation is not a useful way to calculate damages, because the value of the patent shouldn't change based on who is buying and selling. A second selection effect is not within the data, but what is not in the data: these are only material licenses. If the licenses are not material, they will not be reported. Those licenses are likely to be smaller, whether due to patent value or bargaining power.

This is a really interesting and useful paper, and worth a look.

The Supreme Court issued its opinion in WesternGeco last week. The holding (7-2) was relatively straightforward: if an infringer exports a component in violation of 35 USC 271(f)(2) (that is, the component has no substantial noninfringing use), then the presumption of extraterritoriality will not bar damages that occur overseas. And that's about all it ruled. It left harder questions, like proximate cause, for another day.

I spent the end of the week and weekend reading commentary on the case (and tussling a bit on Facebook and Twitter). A couple blog posts worth checking out are Tim Holbrook's and Tom Cotter's. I had just a few thoughts to add.

I've done a few interviews about the latest Apple v. Samsung design patent jury verdict, but journalistic space means I only get a couple sentences in. So, I thought I would lay out a couple points I see as important. We'll see if they hold up as predictions.

There's been a lot written about the case, so I won't rehash the epic story. Here's the short version. The design patent law affords the winning plaintiff all of the profits on the infringing article of manufacture. The Supreme Court ruled (reversing about 100 years of opposite practice) that the article of manufacture could be less than the entire accused device for sale. Because the original jury instructions did not consider this, the Court remanded for a determination of what the infringing article of manufacture was in this case (the design patents covered the shape of the phone and the default screen). The Federal Circuit remanded, and the District Court decided that, yes, in fact, the original jury instructions were defective and ordered a retrial of damages.

The District Court adopted the Solicitor General's suggested test to determine what the article of manufacture was, determined that under that test it was a disputed fact question, and sent it to the jury. Apple asked for $1 billion. Samsung asked for $28 million. The jury awarded $533 million, which is more than $100 million more than the damages were before the Supreme Court ruled.

After the trial, one or more jurors stated that the entire phone was the article of manufacture because you can't get the screen without the rest of the phone. I suppose that the half a billion is deducting expenses that Apple didn't want to deduct.

So, here are my points:

Last Thursday I gave a 25-min recap patent law update to judges and practitioners at the Northern District Practice Program Patent Law Symposium, and I thought blog readers might be interested in my recap of highlights from the past year:

Patent Case Filings and Procedure: Venue, PTAB, and Stays

Lex Machina reports that there were 4057 cases filed in 2017, down 10% from the 4529 in 2016. The biggest procedural change was to venue. As I have explained, in its May 2017 decision in TC Heartland, the Supreme Court held that for purposes of the patent venue statute, a corporation only "resides" in its state of incorporation. The Federal Circuit has since held that this was a change in law, so the venue defense was not "available" under FRCP 12(g)(2), allowing district courts in pending cases to consider venue arguments that were not previously raised by defendants. And the Federal Circuit has offered guidance on the other possibility for proper venue—"where the defendant has committed acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business"—saying that this requires (1) a fixed, physical presence that (2) is regular and established (not transient) and that (3) is a place of the defendant (not merely of an employee).

TC Heartland is likely responsible for the decline in cases filed in E.D. Tex. and the uptick in districts like D. Del. and N.D. Cal., though in neither of the latter have filings reached pre-2015 levels:

For the small subgroup of people who read this blog, but don't read Patently-O, I thought I would point to a new article that I've posted called (Un)Reasonable Royalties. I won't write much about it here. Dennis Crouch did a nice review, for which I'm thankful. Here is the abstract:

Though reasonable royalty damages are ubiquitous in patent litigation, they are only one-hundred years old. But in that time they have become deeply misunderstood. This Article returns to the development and origins of reasonable royalties, exploring both why and how courts originally assessed them.

It then turns a harsh eye toward all that we think we know about reasonable royalties. No current belief is safe from criticism, from easy targets such as the 25% “rule of thumb” to fundamental dogma such as the hypothetical negotiation. In short, the Article concludes that we are doing it wrong, and have been for some time.

This Article is agnostic as to outcome; departure from traditional methods can and has led to both over- and under-compensation. But it challenges those who support departure from historic norms—all the while citing cases from the same time period—to justify new rules, many of which fail any economic justification.

The Supreme Court heard Apple v. Samsung (technically Samsung v. Apple) today. The transcript is here. This post is short and assumes some knowledge of the issues: the tea leaves appear to be that many justices are uncomfortable with the current rule that treats the "article of manufacture" as the entire product. Even Apple seemed to give ground (surprisingly) and admit that what the article of manufacture is a factual determination (but that Apple satisfies those facts in this case). This was an interesting concession, quite frankly, as it is not a given that the Court would accept its view that no new trial is needed. The Court did not seem to even want to hear the "don't remand" argument.

But it also seems clear that the Court has no idea how a rule would operate in practice. After all, it's been 140 years and as far as I can tell, one important case has ever denied profits to a design that was not sold separately (on a refrigerator latch). And Justice Kennedy, in particular, was worried about how one would distinguish a method of determining profits of the patented article of manufacture (OK) as compared to the apportioning profits associated with the patented design (Not OK).

I've made no secret that I favor Samsung's view here. I signed on to an amicus that said as much, and I believe that there is case law mentioned briefly by counsel for Apple (and cited in the amicus) that allows for assessing profits only associated with the infringement, not the entire product. For example, in Westinghouse, the Court held that even if all profits were to be assessed with no apportionment, the defendant could still provide evidence that separated profits unrelated to the infringement.

But that said, I think the argument highlights the central tension here. In Dobson v. Hartford Carpet (1885), the Court considered the very same arguments made today: that people buy carpet for a variety of reasons, that design might drive sales, but there are also other inventions that affect quality in the carding, spinning, dying, and weaving (not to mention the backing). Thus, the Court held, any profits must be allocated based on the patented design. It would be unfair, the Court ruled, to force defendants to pay out their entire profits twice if they infringed another patent.

It was this ruling that Congress promptly intended to reverse by making a rule that all profits on the article of manufacturer would be owed.  If the proposals discussed today were in place then, Dobson would not have received all of the defendant's profits; I cannot believe that Congress intended this outcome then, and so I wonder how one can read the statute differently now.

And that's where I'm left. The utilitarian in me says this statute is wrong in many ways (and I've looked for ways to achieve that result through statutory interpretation, like Westinghouse). But the statutory intepreter in me finds it hard to believe that we've somehow misunderstood this statute for the last 140 years, and that the solutions today would leave us with the same outcome that Congress quite clearly intended to reverse. If the Court does decide on narrowing damages, I wish it good luck in finding a happy medium.

I wrote a short post on Monday's decision in Halo v. Pulse for Stanford's Legal Aggregate blog, which I'm reposting here.

The Supreme Court just made it easier for patent plaintiffs to get enhanced damages—but perhaps at the cost of limiting the teaching benefit patents can provide to other researchers. Chief Justice Robert’s opinion in Halo v. Pulse marks yet another case in which the Supreme Court has unanimously rejected the Federal Circuit’s efforts to create clearer rules for patent litigants. Unlike most other Supreme Court patent decisions over the past decade, however, Halo v. Pulse serves to strengthen rather than weaken patent rights.

Patent plaintiffs typically may recover only their lost profits or a “reasonable royalty” to compensate for the infringement, but § 284 of the Patent Act states that “the court may increase the damages up to three times the amount found or assessed.” In the absence of statutory guidance on when the court may award these enhanced damages, the Federal Circuit created a two-part test in its 2007 en banc Seagate opinion, holding that the patentee must show both “objective recklessness” and “subjective knowledge” on the part of the infringer. The Supreme Court has now replaced this “unduly rigid” rule with a more uncertain standard, holding that district courts have wide discretion “to punish the full range of culpable behavior” though “such punishment should generally be reserved for egregious cases.”

Numerous patent academics, practitioners, and judges gathered in Austin at the University of Texas School of Law yesterday and today for a conference on patent damages, organized by Prof. John Golden and supported by a gift from Intel. Here's a quick overview of the 12 papers that were presented, the suggestions from the paper commenters, and some notes from the Q&A. (We're following a modified Chatham House Rules in which only statements from academics can be attributed, but it was great having others in the room.)

Jason Bartlett & Jorge Contreras, Interpleader and FRAND Royalties – There is no reason to believe the sum of the bottom-up royalty determinations from FRAND proceedings will be reasonable in terms of the overall value the patents contribute to the standard. To fix this, statutory interpleader should be used to join all patent owners for a particular standard into a single proceeding that starts with a top-down approach. Arti Rai asks whether the bottom-up approach really creates such significant problems. Why can’t courts doing the bottom-up approach look at what prior courts have done? And doesn’t this vary depending on what product you’re talking about? But ultimately, this is a voluntary proposal that individual clients could test out. Doug Melamed notes that even if royalties in individual cases are excessive, standard implementers won't have an incentive to interplead unless their aggregate burden is excessive—and given the large number of "sleeping dog" patents, it's not clear that's true.

Ted Sichelman, Innovation Factors for Reasonable Royalties – Instead of calculating royalties based on the infringer's revenues, let's use the patentee's R&D costs (including related failures and commercialization costs) and award reasonable rate of return. Better aligned with innovation-focused goals of patent law. Becky Eisenberg notes that it is stunning that patentee costs aren't in the kitchen-sink Georgia-Pacific list, and she thinks idea of moving toward a cost-based approach more broadly has significant normative appeal, but she doesn't think it's easier to apply (see, e.g., criticisms of DiMasi estimates of pharmaceutical R&D costs). I think this paper is tapping into the benefits of R&D tax credits as an innovation reward. Daniel Hemel and I have compared the cost-based reward of R&D tax credits with the typical patent reward (in a paper Ted has generously reviewed), and it seems worth thinking more about whether and when it makes sense to move this cost-based reward into the patent system.