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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, December 18 2012 @ 06:31 PM EST |
From the
Jury Instructions:
Final Jury Instruction No. 35 Utility Patent
Damages - Burdon Of Proof
I will instruct you about the measure of
damages for claims of utility patent infringement. By instructing you on
damages, I am not suggesting which party should win on any issue. If you find
that either party infringed any valid and enforceable claim of the other side's
patents, you must then determine the amount of money damages to be awarded to
the patent holder to compensate it for the infringement.
The
amount of those damages must be adequate to compensate the patent holder for
the infringement. A damages award should put the patent holder in
approximately the financial position it would have been in had the infringement
not occurred, but in no event may the damages award be less than a reasonable
royalty. You should keep in mind that the damages you award are meant to
compensate the patent holder and not to punish an infringer.
Each
patent holder has the burden to persuade you of the amount of its damages. You
should award only those damages that the patent holder proves it suffered by a
preponderance of the evidence. While a patent holder is not required to prove
its damages with mathematical precision, it must prove them with reasonable
certainty. Neither patent holder is entitled to damages that are remote or
speculative.
Bolding mine. This - of course - was not the sole
instruction to that effect. For example Final Jury Instruction No. 53 is almost
identical word-for-word. A small snip:
You should keep in mind that
the damages you award are meant to compensate the patent holder and not to
punish an infringer.
From an Interview with Mr. Hogan in Reuters, Mr. Hogan is quoted as saying:
"We wanted
to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said.
"We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not
unreasonable."
A "slap on the wrist" is a phrase commonly defined
as: a mild rebuke or punishment. Perhaps you know of another definition for the
phrase?
If that's not to be interpreted as "punishment" perhaps you can
explain how what Mr. Hogan said fits in to the wording of the Jury
Instruction.
True: The Jury Instruction does not explicitly speak to
"sending a message" or "slap on the wrist"... but how does either phrase fit in
with "damages you award are meant to compensate"?
Please explain since
you dispute what Mr. Hogan said can be reasonably understood as a
punishment.
RAS[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, December 19 2012 @ 05:34 AM EST |
Hogan may not have used the word "punish", but I and others are
judging him on his deeds, not his lack of use of a single word. When you measure
the penalty in terms of the degree of pain it inflicts, you are punishing. If he
was "compensating", the focus of his comment would have been on Apple
- Samsung and "the industry" would not have rated a mention. The focus
was on the party paying, not the party receiving.
In a way, I kind of wish your perverted logic was valid. If your argument was
applied consistently, then Samsung simply not saying that they copied Apple
would have been enough. Unfortunately, the court wasn't quite as silly as you
and at least made an attempt to judge Samsung on their perceived deeds rather
than just their words. Unfortunately, due to Hogan's injection of his
self-proclaimed expertise regarding patents, his inconsistant application of the
criteria that allowed him to reject Samsung's prior art (it won't run on an
Apple) without using the same reasoning to reject Apple's patent, and his total
disregard for the judge's instructions, the process was badly derailed.
Hogan and the jury took it upon themselves to punish Samsung in spite of the
direction not to.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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