The next set of blog posts will discuss trade-secret damages. Trade-secret law, unlike patent law, is governed by both state and federal law in the U.S. As a result, the law is not necessarily uniform throughout the U.S. Nevertheless, trade-secret damages, generally, can take one of three forms: actual loss caused by misappropriation, unjust enrichment and reasonable royalties.

My last “damages” blog post presented the 16 Georgia Pacific factors that can be considered by a jury in determining a reasonable royalty award in a patent infringement case. The Georgia Pacific factors may not be the only issues that arise in determining a reasonable royalty.

I want to take a break from my series on intellectual-property (IP) decisions to review the first Supreme Court IP decision in 2019. The decision for the case titled “Helsinn Healthcare S.A. v. Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc.” was issued on Jan. 22, 2019.

Reasonable royalties represent the lower estimate of damages in patent infringement cases. The determination of a reasonable royalty can be a very complicated calculation that can be based on as many as 16, which include...

Lost profits represent the upper estimate of damages in patent-infringement cases. The lost profits that a patent owner can obtain represent the profits that the patent owner would have obtained if the infringing product was not sold in the relevant market. Thus, the lost profits represent the patent owner’s lost profits. The infringer’s profits are essentially irrelevant. 

A previous blog discussed the subject of remedies for patent infringement. In that post, I discussed the subject of patent damages in an abbreviated manner.

The United States, Mexico and Canada entered into an agreement on Oct. 1, 2018, that is intended to replace the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The agreement is referred to as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

Earlier this year, I did a blog post on the status of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act (UTSA). In the blog, I noted that the UTSA has been enacted in 48 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with New York and Massachusetts being the lone holdouts.

The final installment of this series on the major intellectual property (IP) treaties will discuss three more agreements, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the “TRIPS Agreement”), the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Deposit of Industrial Designs (the “Hague Agreement”), and the Lisbon Agreement for the Protection of Appellations of Origin (the “Lisbon Agreement”).

The next major intellectual property (IP) treaty that I would like to discuss in this blog is The European Patent Convention or Convention on the Grant of European Patents. The treaty was signed in 1973 and became effective in 1977.