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President Obama's 2013 veto of a US International Trade Commission (ITC) exclusion order, issued to address Apple Inc.'s infringement of a patent owned by Samsung, thrust the ITC's public interest inquiry into the spotlight. Historically, however, these factors rarely weighed against a remedy at the ITC. Likewise, US district courts have rarely declined to issue a permanent injunction after finding a patent valid and infringed due solely to the public interest factor--the last of the four factors that the Supreme Court put in place in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. More recent decisions addressing the public interest in both forums, however, show a willingness by the adjudicators to weigh both traditional public interest issues, such as health and well-being, and non-traditional arguments, such as public reliance and environmental concerns, against a patent owner's right to exclude. In this Article, we examine some of the successful traditional and non-traditional public interest arguments, both at the ITC and in US district courts. From this analysis, the Article outlines how parties involved in high-stakes patent litigation in either forum can craft public interest arguments to combat the threat of a permanent injunction or an ITC exclusion order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the greatest challenges facing patent holders is the enforcement of their rights against foreign (non-US) infringers. Jurisdictional rules can prevent patent holders from filing patent infringement suits where they have the greatest likelihood of success in enforcement, such as where the infringer is located, has its seat, or holds its assets. Instead, patent holders must file lawsuits in the country where the infringed patent was issued. But filing a patent lawsuit in a US court against a non-US infringer may be subject to various difficulties associated with the fact that US substantive patent law (particularly as regards its territorial scope) and conflict of laws rules are not always compatible and interoperable with the conflict of laws rules of other countries. Such insufficient compatibility and interoperability can lead to US judgments not being enforceable outside the United States. In the Hague Conference's Judgments Project, which the Conference relaunched in 2012, the United States has an opportunity to negotiate internationally-uniform conflict of laws rules to improve cross-border litigation, including cross-border patent litigation. This Article provides data on cross-border patent litigation that can be used to show the extent of the cross-border patent litigation problem and assist in assessing the appropriate degree of US involvement in the Judgments Project. The Article updates the author's earlier research on cross-border aspects of patent litigation, contributes to the rapidly growing body of empirical literature on patent litigation (including the literature on the "patent troll" phenomenon), and enriches the literature on foreign litigants in patent disputes and on transnational litigation in general (both of which suffer from a dearth of statistical data). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely argued that so-called “patent trolls” are corrupting the U.S. patent system and endangering technology innovation and commercialization at large. For example, a recent White House report argued that “trolls” hurt firms of all sizes and advocated for specific policies aimed at curtailing practices thought to be particularly harmful. Yet the existence and extent of any systematic effects of so-called “troll-like” behavior, and the implications of modern patent assertion practices by Non-Practicing Entities (“NPEs”), remains unclear. This article develops novel empirical evidence to inform the debate over NPEs on patent litigation. Specifically, we conduct a large-scale empirical analysis of more than 1,750 patent infringement cases decided by a judge or jury in U.S. district courts between 1995 and 2011. We focus on case outcomes, including findings of validity and infringement, and the distributions and values of resulting damage awards. We find some relatively small differences in terms of lower success rates and award values in cases where the patent holders are NPEs. Yet across the subset of cases in which damages are awarded to the patent holders, we find no significant differences in the distribution of awards between NPEs and practicing entities. Nonetheless, there are substantial differences in litigation behavior, success rates, and award values among types of NPEs (that is, universities, individuals, and Patent Assertion Entities (“PAEs”)). Moreover, we find evidence of certain NPEs engaging in strategic and rational patent acquisition, assertion, and settlement-licensing practices. We posit that these practices may reflect, or perhaps derive from, the economic separation of patent rights from their underlying technologies that is represented in NPE approaches to patent assertion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information regarding the importance of U.S. patent laws for the Canadian companies for their increased involvement in the U.S. economy. It discusses an overview of the key points of the patent litigation process and the prospects of patent infringement lawsuits in the U.S. also discussed are the basics of patents, costs related to patent disputes in the U.S., and filing of a complaint in a U.S. district court.