Managing Intellectual Property

Compromise puts US patent reform back on track (full version)

06 April 2009

Eileen McDermott, New York

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved an amended version of the US Patent Reform Act (S515) that is said to include significant compromises on provisions that have kept the bill deadlocked thus far

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved an amended version of the US Patent Reform Act (S515) that is said to include significant compromises on provisions that have kept the bill deadlocked thus far

The biggest change is to the provision on damages, which has polarised the patent community since the bill's introduction in 2007.

The section originally sought to calculate damages for patent infringement based upon "that economic value properly attributable to the patent's specific contribution over the prior art" and also to rule out basing damages on the "entire market value" of a product, unless the patent's "specific contribution over the prior art is the predominant basis for market demand for an infringing product or process".

Software companies in particular have argued that the present method of calculating damages in US infringement cases is unfair. They argue that the entire market value rule, which allows a jury to...



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