Archives For Patent infringement

IP Rights Are Important, Even in Pandemics

Kristian Stout —  4 April 2020

[TOTM: The following is part of a blog series by TOTM guests and authors on the law, economics, and policy of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The entire series of posts is available here.

This post is authored by Kristian Stout, (Associate Director, International Center for Law & Economics]

The ongoing pandemic has been an opportunity to explore different aspects of the human condition. For myself, I have learned that, despite a deep commitment to philosophical (neo- or classical-) liberalism, at heart I am pragmatic. I would prefer a society that optimizes for more individual liberty, but I am emphatically not someone who would even entertain the idea of using crises to advance my agenda when it is not clearly in service to amelioration of immediate problems.

Sadly, I have also learned that there are those who are not similarly pragmatic, and are willing to advance their ideological agenda come hell or high water. In this regard, I was disappointed yesterday to see the Gurry IP/COVID Letter passing around Twitter calling for widespread, worldwide interference with the property rights of IPR holders. 

The letter calls for a scattershot set of “remedies” to the crisis that would open access to copyright- and patent-protected inventions and content, including (among other things): 

  • voluntary licensing and non-enforcement of IP;
  • abrogation of IPR by WIPO members using the  “flexibility” in the international IP regime; 
  • the removal of geographical restrictions on IP licenses;
  • forcing patents into COVID-19 patent pools; and 
  • the implementation of compulsory licensing. 

And, unlike many prior efforts to push the envelope on weakening IP protections, the Gurry Letter also calls for measures that would weaken trade secrets and expose confidential business information in order to “achieve universal and equitable access to COVID-19 medicines and medical technologies as soon as reasonably possible.”

Notably, nothing in the letter suggests that any of these measures should be regarded as temporary.

We all want treatments for infection, vaccines for prevention, and ample supply of personal protective equipment as soon as possible, but if all the demands in this letter were met, it would do little to increase the supply of any of these things in the short term, while undermining incentives to develop new treatments, vaccines and better preventative tools in the long run. 

Fundamentally, the letter  reflects a willingness to use the COVID-19 pandemic to pursue an agenda that lacks merit and would be dismissed in the normal course of affairs. 

What is most certainly the case is that we need more innovation now, and we need it faster. There is no reason to believe that mandating open source status or forcing compulsory licensing on the firms doing that work will encourage that work to proceed with all due haste—and every indication that the opposite is the case. 

Where there are short term shortages of certain products that might be produced in much larger quantities by relaxing IP, companies are responding by doing just that—voluntarily. But this is fundamentally different from the imposition of unlimited compulsory licenses.

Further, private actors have displayed an impressive willingness to provide free or low cost access to technologies and content—without government coercion. The following is a short list of some of the content and inventions that have been opened up:

Culture, Fitness & Entertainment

  • “HBO Will Stream 500 Hours of Free Programming, Including Full Seasons of ‘Veep,’ ‘The Sopranos,’ ‘Silicon Valley’”
  • Dozens (or more) of artists, both famous and lesser known, are releasing free back catalog performances or are taking part in free live streaming sessions on social media platforms. Notably, viewers are often welcome to donate or “pay what they” want to help support these artists (more on this below).
  • The NBA, NFL, and NHL are offering free access to their back catalogue of games.
  • A large array of music production software can now be used free on extended trials for 3 months (or completely free and unlimited in some cases). 
  • CBS All Access expanded its free trial period.
  • Neil Gaiman and Harper Collins granted permission to Levar Burton to livestream readings from their catalogs.
  • Disney is releasing movies early onto its (paid) Disney+ services.
  • Gold’s Gym is providing free access to its app-based workouts.
  • The Met is streaming free recordings of its Live in HD series.
  • The Seattle Symphony is offering free access to some of its recorded performances.
  • The UK National Theater is streaming some of its most popular plays for free.
  • Andrew Lloyd Weber is streaming his shows online for free.

Science, News & Education

  • Scholastica released free content intended to help educate students stuck at home while sheltering-in-place. 
  • Nearly 100 academic journals, societies, institutes, and companies signed a commitment to make research and data on COVID-19 freely available, at least for the duration of the outbreak.
  • The Atlantic lifted paywall restrictions on access to its COVID-19-related content.
  • The New England Journal of Medicine is allowing free access to COVID-19-related resources.
  • The Lancet allows free access to research it publishes on COVID-19.
  • All material published by theBMJ on the coronavirus outbreak is freely available.
  • The AAAS-published Science allows free access to its coronavirus research and commentary.
  • Elsevier gave full access to its content on its COVID-19 Information Center for PubMed Central and other public health databases.
  • The American Economic Association announced open access to all of its journals until the end of June.
  • JSTOR expanded free access to some of its scholarship.

Medicine & Technology

  • The Global Center for Medical Design is developing license-free PPE designs that can be quickly implemented by manufacturers.
  • Medtronic published “design specifications for the Puritan Bennett 560 (PB560) to allow innovators, inventors, start-ups, and academic institutions to leverage their own expertise and resources to evaluate options for rapid ventilator manufacturing.” It additionally provided software licenses for this technology.
  • AbbVie announced it won’t enforce its patent rights for Kaletra—a drug that may provide treatment for COVID-19 infections. Israel had earlier indicated it would impose compulsory licenses for the drug, but AbbVie is allowing use worldwide. The company, moreover, had donated supplies of the drug to China earlier in the year when the outbreak first became apparent.
  • Google is working with health researchers to provide anonymized and aggregated user location data. 
  • “Cisco has extended free licenses and expanded usage counts at no extra charge for three of its security technologies to help strained IT teams and partners ready themselves and their clients for remote work.”
  • Microsoft is offering free subscriptions to its Teams product for six months.
  • Zoom expanded its free access and other limitations for educational institutions around the world.

Incentivize innovation, now more than ever

In addition to undermining the short-term incentives to draw more research resources into the fight against COVID-19, using this crisis to weaken the IP regime will cause long-term damage to the economies of the world. We still will need creators making new cultural products and researchers developing new medicines and technologies; weakening the IP regime will undermine the delicate set of incentives that cultural and scientific production depends upon. 

Any clear-eyed assessment of the broader course of the pandemic and the response to it gives lie to the notion that IP rights are oppressive or counterproductive. It is the pharmaceutical industry—hated as they may be in some quarters—that will be able to marshall the resources and expertise to develop treatments and vaccines. And it is artists and educators producing cultural content who (theoretically) depend on the licensing revenues of their creations for survival. 

In fact, one of the things that the pandemic has exposed is the fragility of artists’ livelihoods and the callousness with which they are often treated. Shortly after the lockdowns began in the US, the well-established rock musician David Crosby said in an interview that, if he could not tour this year, he would face tremendous financial hardship. 

As unfortunate as that may be for Crosby, a world-famous musician, imagine how much harder it is for struggling musicians who can hardly hope to achieve a fraction of Crosby’s success for their own tours, let alone for licensing. If David Crosby cannot manage well for a few months on the revenue from his popular catalog, what hope do small artists have?

Indeed, the flood of unable-to-tour artists who are currently offering “donate what you can” streaming performances are a symptom of the destructive assault on IPR exemplified in the letter. For decades, these artists have been told that they can only legitimately make money through touring. Although the potential to actually make a living while touring is possibly out of reach for many or most artists,  those that had been scraping by have now been brought to the brink of ruin as the ability to tour is taken away. 

There are certainly ways the various IP regimes can be improved (like, for instance, figuring out how to help creators make a living from their creations), but now is not the time to implement wishlist changes to an otherwise broadly successful rights regime. 

And, critically, there is a massive difference between achieving wider distribution of intellectual property voluntarily as opposed to through government fiat. When done voluntarily the IP owner determines the contours and extent of “open sourcing” so she can tailor increased access to her own needs (including the need to eat and pay rent). In some cases this may mean providing unlimited, completely free access, but in other cases—where the particular inventor or creator has a different set of needs and priorities—it may be something less than completely open access. When a rightsholder opts to “open source” her property voluntarily, she still retains the right to govern future use (i.e. once the pandemic is over) and is able to plan for reductions in revenue and how to manage future return on investment. 

Our lawmakers can consider if a particular situation arises where a particular piece of property is required for the public good, should the need arise. Otherwise, as responsible individuals, we should restrain ourselves from trying to capitalize on the current crisis to ram through our policy preferences. 

In China, Copyright, COVID-19, Google, Health Care, Intellectual Property, International, International Center for Law & Economics, Patent, Pharmaceuticals, Platforms, Symposia, The Law, Economics, and Policy of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Truth on the Market, Twitter, United Kingdom , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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FTC v. AbbVie – Questioning the Agency’s Enforcement Authority

Joanna Shepherd —  23 January 2020

A pending case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit has raised several interesting questions about the FTC enforcement approach and patent litigation in the pharmaceutical industry.  The case, FTC v. AbbVie, involves allegations that AbbVie (and Besins) filed sham patent infringement cases against generic manufacturer Teva (and Perrigo) for the purpose of preventing or delaying entry into the testosterone gel market in which AbbVie’s AndroGel had a monopoly.  The FTC further alleges that AbbVie and Teva settled the testosterone gel litigation in AbbVie’s favor while making a large payment to Teva in an unrelated case, behavior that, considered together, amounted to an illegal reverse payment settlement. The district court dismissed the reverse payment claims, but concluded that the patent infringement cases were sham litigation. It ordered disgorgement damages of $448 million against AbbVie and Besins which was the profit they gained from maintaining the AndroGel monopoly.

The 3rd Circuit has been asked to review several elements of the district court’s decision including whether the original patent infringement cases amounted to sham litigation, whether the payment to Teva in a separate case amounted to an illegal reverse payment, and whether the FTC has the authority to seek disgorgement damages.  The decision will help to clarify outstanding issues relating to patent litigation and the FTC’s enforcement abilities, but it also has the potential to chill pro-competitive behavior in the pharmaceutical market encouraged under Hatch-Waxman. 

First, the 3rd Circuit will review whether AbbVie’s patent infringement case was sham litigation by asking whether the district court applied the right standard and how plaintiffs must prove that lawsuits are baseless.  The district court determined that the case was a sham because it was objectively baseless (AbbVie couldn’t reasonably expect to win) and subjectively baseless (AbbVie brought the cases solely to delay generic entry into the market).  AbbVie argues that the district court erred by not requiring affirmative evidence of bad faith and not requiring the FTC to present clear and convincing evidence that AbbVie and its attorneys believed the lawsuits were baseless.

While sham litigation should be penalized and deterred, especially when it produces anticompetitive effects, the 3rd Circuit’s decision, depending on how it comes out, also has the potential to deter brand drug makers from filing patent infringement cases in the first place.  This threatens to disrupt the delicate balance that Hatch-Waxman sought to establish between protecting generic entry while encouraging brand competition.

The 3rd Circuit will also determine whether AbbVie’s payment to Teva in a separate case involving cholesterol medicine was an illegal reverse payment, otherwise known as a “pay-for-delay” settlement.  The FTC asserts that the actions in the two cases—one involving testosterone gel and the other involving cholesterol medicine—should be considered together, but the district court disagreed and determined there was no illegal reverse payment.  True pay-for-delay settlements are anticompetitive and harm consumers by delaying their access to cheaper generic alternatives.  However, an overly-liberal definition of what constitutes an illegal reverse payment will deter legitimate settlements, thereby increasing expenses for all parties that choose to litigate and possibly dissuading generics from bringing patent challenges in the first place.  Moreover, FTC’s argument that two settlements occurring in separate cases around the same time is suspicious overlooks the reality that the pharmaceutical industry has become increasingly concentrated and drug companies often have more than one pending litigation matter against another company involving entirely different products and circumstances. 

Finally, the 3rd Circuit will determine whether the FTC has the authority to seek disgorgement damages on past acts like settled patent litigation.  AbbVie has argued that the agency has no right to disgorgement because it isn’t enumerated in the FTC Act and because courts can’t order injunctive relieve, including disgorgement, on completed past acts. 

The FTC has sought disgorgement damages only sparingly, but the frequency with which the agency seeks disgorgement and the amount of the damages have increased in recent years. Proponents of the FTC’s approach argue that the threat of large disgorgement damages provides a strong deterrent to anticompetitive behavior.  While true, FTC-ordered disgorgement (even if permissible) may go too far and end up chilling economic activity by exposing businesses to exorbitant liability without clear guidance on when disgorgement will be awarded. The 3rd Circuit will determine whether the FTC’s enforcement approach is authorized, a decision that has important implications for whether the agency’s enforcement can deter unfair practices without depressing economic activity.

In Federal Trade Commission, Health Care, Intellectual Property, Patent, Pharmaceuticals, Truth on the Market , , , , , ,
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Inter Partes Review Jeopardizes the Social Contract between Drug Makers and Patients

Joanna Shepherd —  22 October 2017

It’s been six weeks since drug maker Allergan announced that it had assigned to the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe the patents on Restasis, an Allergan drug challenged both in IPR proceedings and in Hatch-Waxman proceedings in federal district court.  The unorthodox agreement was intended to shield the patents from IPR proceedings (and thus restrict the challenge to district court) as the Mohawks would seek to dismiss the IPR proceedings based on the tribe’s sovereign immunity.  Although Allergan  suffered a setback last week when the federal court invalidated the Restasis patents and, in dicta, expressed concern about the Allergan/Mohawk arrangement, several other entities are following Allergan’s lead and assigning patents to sovereigns in hopes of avoiding IPR proceedings.

As an example, in August, SRC Labs assigned about 40 computer technology patents to the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe.  Last week, the tribe, with SRC as co-plaintiff, filed lawsuits against Microsoft and Amazon for infringement of its data processing patents; the assignment of the SRC patents to the tribe could prevent a counter-challenge from Microsoft and Amazon in IPR proceedings.  Similarly, Prowire LLC, who has sued Apple for infringement, has assigned the patent in question to MEC Resources, a company affiliated with three tribes in North Dakota.  And state universities (whom the PTAB considers to be arms of the sovereign states, and thus immune to IPR challenges) are in discussions with lawyers about offering their sovereign immunity to patent owners as a way to shield patents in IPR proceedings.

These arrangements that attempt to avoid the IPR process and force patent challenges into federal courts are no surprise given the current unbalance in the IPR system.  Critical differences exist between IPR proceedings and Hatch-Waxman litigation that have created a significant deviation in patent invalidation rates under the two pathways; compared to district court challenges, patents are twice as likely to be found invalid in IPR challenges.

The PTAB applies a lower standard of proof for invalidity in IPR proceedings than do federal courts in Hatch-Waxman proceedings. In federal court, patents are presumed valid and challengers must prove each patent claim invalid by “clear and convincing evidence.” In IPR proceedings, no such presumption of validity applies and challengers must only prove patent claims invalid by the “preponderance of the evidence.” In addition to the lower burden, it is also easier for challengers to meet the standard of proof in IPR proceedings.  In federal court, patent claims are construed according to their “ordinary and customary meaning” to a person of ordinary skill in the art.  In contrast, the PTAB uses the more lenient “broadest reasonable interpretation” standard; this more lenient standard can result in the PTAB interpreting patent claims as “claiming too much” (using their broader standard), resulting in the invalidation of more patents.

Moreover, whereas patent challengers in district court must establish sufficient Article III standing, IPR proceedings do not have a standing requirement.  This has given rise to “reverse patent trolling,” in which entities that are not litigation targets, or even participants in the same industry, threaten to file an IPR petition challenging the validity of a patent unless the patent holder agrees to specific pre-filing settlement demands.  The lack of a standing requirement has also led to the  exploitation of the IPR process by entities that would never be granted standing in traditional patent litigation—hedge funds betting against a company by filing an IPR challenge in hopes of crashing the stock and profiting from the bet.

Finally, patent owners are often forced into duplicative litigation in both IPR proceedings and federal court litigation, leading to persistent uncertainty about the validity of their patents.  Many patent challengers that are unsuccessful in invalidating a patent in district court may pursue subsequent IPR proceedings challenging the same patent, essentially giving patent challengers “two bites at the apple.”  And if the challenger prevails in the IPR proceedings (which is easier to do given the lower standard of proof and broader claim construction standard), the PTAB’s decision to invalidate a patent can often “undo” a prior district court decision.  Further, although both district court judgments and PTAB decisions are appealable to the Federal Circuit, the court applies a more deferential standard of review to PTAB decisions, increasing the likelihood that they will be upheld compared to the district court decision.

Courts are increasingly recognizing that certain PTAB practices are biased against patent owners, and, in some cases, violations of underlying law.  The U.S. Supreme Court in Cuozzo Speed Technologies v. Lee concluded that the broadest reasonable interpretation claim construction standard in IPR “increases the possibility that the examiner will find the claim too broad (and deny it)” and that the different claim construction standards in PTAB trials and federal court “may produce inconsistent results and cause added confusion.”  However, the Court concluded that only Congress could mandate a different standard.  Earlier this month, in Aqua Products, Inc. v. Matal, the Federal Circuit held that “[d]espite repeated recognition of the importance of the patent owner’s right to amend [patent claims] during IPR proceedings— by Congress, courts, and the PTO alike—patent owners largely have been prevented from amending claims in the context of IPRs.”   And the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Oil States Energy Services v. Greene’s Energy Group, which questions whether IPR proceedings are even constitutional because they extinguish private property rights through a non-Article III forum without a jury. 

As Courts and lawmakers continue to question the legality and wisdom of IPR to review pharmaceutical patents, they should remember that the relationship between drug companies and patients resembles a social contract. Under this social contract, patients have the right to reasonably-priced, innovative drugs and sufficient access to alternative drug choices, while drug companies have the right to earn profits that compensate for the risk inherent in developing new products and to a stable environment that gives the companies the incentive and ability to innovate.  This social contract requires a balancing of prices (not too high to gouge consumers but not too low to insufficiently compensate drug companies), competition law (not so lenient that it ignores anticompetitive behavior that restricts patients’ access to alternative drugs, but not so strict that it prevents companies from intensely competing for profits), and most importantly in the context of IPR, patent law (not so weak that it fails to incentivize innovation and drug development, but not so strong that it enables drug companies to monopolize the market for an unreasonable amount of time).  The unbalanced IPR process threatens this balance by creating significant uncertainty in pharmaceutical intellectual property rights.  Uncertain patent rights will lead to less innovation in the pharmaceutical industry because drug companies will not spend the billions of dollars it typically costs to bring a new drug to market when they cannot be certain if the patents for that drug can withstand IPR proceedings that are clearly stacked against them.  Indeed, last week former Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Redmond Michel acknowledged that IPR has contributed to “hobbling” our nation’s patent system, “discourag[ing] investment, R&D and commercialization.” And if IPR causes drug innovation to decline, a significant body of research predicts that consumers’ health outcomes will suffer as a result.

In Amazon, Apple, COVID-19, Financial Regulation, Health Care, Intellectual Property, Patent, Pharmaceuticals, Platforms, Supreme Court, Truth on the Market , , , , , , , ,
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The Allergan-Mohawk deal: An ingenious strategy to avoid an unbalanced IPR process

Joanna Shepherd —  14 September 2017

Last Friday, drug maker Allergan and the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe announced that they had reached an agreement under which Allergan assigned the patents on its top-selling drug Restasis to the tribe and, in return, Allergan was given the exclusive license on the Restasis patents so that it can continue producing and distributing the drug.  Allergan agreed to pay $13.75 million to the tribe for the deal, and up to $15 million annually in royalties as long as the patents remain valid.

Why would a large drug maker assign the patents on a leading drug to a sovereign Indian nation?  This unorthodox agreement may actually be a brilliant strategy that enables patent owners to avoid the unbalanced inter partes review (IPR) process.  The validity of the Restasis patents is currently being challenged both in IPR proceedings before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and in federal district court in Texas.  However, the Allergan-Mohawk deal may lead to the dismissal of the IPR proceedings as, under the terms of the deal, the Mohawks will file a motion to dismiss the IPR proceedings based on the tribe’s sovereign immunity.  Earlier this year, in Covidien v. University of Florida Research Foundation, the PTAB determined that sovereign immunity shields state universities holding patents from IPR proceedings, and the same reasoning should certainly apply to sovereign Indian nations.

I’ve published a previous article explaining why pharmaceutical companies have legitimate reasons to avoid IPR proceedings–critical differences between district court litigation and IPR proceedings jeopardize the delicate balance Hatch-Waxman sought to achieve between patent owners and patent challengers. In addition to forcing patent owners into duplicative litigation in district courts and the PTAB, depriving them of the ability to achieve finality in one proceeding, the PTAB also applies a lower standard of proof for invalidity than do district courts in Hatch-Waxman litigation.  It is also easier to meet the standard of proof in a PTAB trial because of a more lenient claim construction standard.  Moreover, on appeal, PTAB decisions in IPR proceedings are given more deference than lower district court decisions.  Finally, while patent challengers in district court must establish sufficient Article III standing, IPR proceedings do not have a standing requirement.  This has led to the exploitation of the IPR process by entities that would never be granted standing in traditional patent litigation—hedge funds betting against a company by filing an IPR challenge in hopes of crashing the stock and profiting from the bet.

The differences between district court litigation and IPR proceedings have created a significant deviation in patent invalidation rates under the two pathways; compared to district court challenges, patents are twice as likely to be found invalid in IPR challenges.  Although the U.S. Supreme Court in Cuozzo Speed Technologies v. Lee concluded that the anti-patentee claim construction standard in IPR “increases the possibility that the examiner will find the claim too broad (and deny it)”, the Court concluded that only Congress could mandate a different standard.  So far, Congress has done nothing to reduce the disparities between IPR proceedings and Hatch-Waxman litigation. But, while we wait, the high patent invalidation rate in IPR proceedings creates significant uncertainty for patent owners’ intellectual property rights.   Uncertain patent rights, in turn, lead to less innovation in the pharmaceutical industry.  Put simply, drug companies will not spend the billions of dollars it typically costs to bring a new drug to market when they can’t be certain if the patents for that drug can withstand IPR proceedings that are clearly stacked against them (for an excellent discussion of how the PTAB threatens innovation, see Alden Abbot’s recent TOTM post).  Thus, deals between brand companies and sovereigns, such as Indian nations, that insulate patents from IPR proceedings should improve the certainty around intellectual property rights and protect drug innovation.

Yet, the response to the Allergan-Mohawk deal among some scholars and generic drug companies has been one of panic and speculative doom.  Critics have questioned the deal largely on the grounds that, in addition to insulating Restasis from IPR proceedings, tribal sovereignty might also shield the patents in standard Hatch-Waxman district court litigation.  If this were true and brand companies began to routinely house their patents with sovereign Indian nations, then the venues in which generic companies could challenge patents would be restricted and generic companies would have less incentive to produce and market cheaper drugs.

However, it is far from clear that these deals could shield patents in standard Hatch-Waxman district court litigation.  Hatch-Waxman litigation typically follows a familiar pattern: a generic company files a Paragraph IV ANDA alleging patent owner’s patents are invalid or will not be infringed, the patent owner then sues the generic for infringement, and then the generic company files a counterclaim for invalidity.  Critics of the Allergan-Mohawk deal allege that tribal sovereignty could insulate patent owners from the counterclaim.  However, courts have held that state universities waive sovereign immunity for counterclaims when they file the initial patent infringement suit.  Although, in non-infringement contexts, tribes have been found to not waive sovereign immunity for counterclaims merely by filing an action as a plaintiff, this has never been tested in patent litigation.  Moreover, even if sovereign immunity could be used to prevent the counterclaim, invalidity can still be raised as an affirmative defense in the patent owner’s infringement suit (although it has been asserted that requiring generics to assert invalidity as an affirmative defense instead of a counterclaim may still tilt the playing field toward patent owners).  Finally, many patent owners that are sovereigns may choose to voluntarily waive sovereign immunity to head off any criticism or congressional meddling. Given the uncertainty of the effects of tribal sovereignty in Hatch-Waxman litigation, Allergan has concluded that their deal with the Mohawks won’t affect the pending district court litigation involving the validity of the Restasis patents.  However, if tribes in future cases were to cloud the viability of Hatch-Waxman by asserting sovereign immunity in district court litigation, Congress could always respond by altering the Hatch-Waxman rules to preclude this.

For now, we should all take a deep breath and put the fearmongering on hold.  Whether deals like the Allergan-Mohawk arrangement could affect Hatch-Waxman litigation is simply a matter of speculation, and there are many reasons to believe that they won’t. In the meantime, the deal between Allergan and the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe is an ingenious strategy to avoid the unbalanced IPR process.   This move is the natural extension of the PTAB’s ruling on state university sovereign immunity, and state universities are likely incorporating the advantage into their own licensing and litigation strategies.  The Supreme Court will soon hear a case questioning the constitutionality of the IPR process.  Until the courts or Congress act to reduce the disparities between IPR proceedings and Hatch-Waxman litigation, we can hardly blame patent owners from taking clever legal steps to avoid the unbalanced IPR process.

In Constitutional Law, COVID-19, Financial Regulation, Health Care, Intellectual Property, Patent, Pharmaceuticals, Platforms, Truth on the Market, Twitter , , , , , , , ,
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Suprema v. ITC: The Case for Chevron Deference

Geoffrey Manne & Kristian Stout —  28 August 2015

Recently, the en banc Federal Circuit decided in Suprema, Inc. v. ITC that the International Trade Commission could properly prevent the importation of articles that infringe under an indirect liability theory. The core of the dispute in Suprema was whether § 337 of the Tariff Act’s prohibition against “importing articles that . . . infringe a valid and enforceable United States patent” could be used to prevent the importation of articles that at the moment of importation were not (yet) directly infringing. In essence, is the ITC limited to acting only when there is a direct infringement, or can it also prohibit articles involved in an indirect infringement scheme — in this case under an inducement theory?

TOTM’s own Alden Abbott posted his view of the decision, and there are a couple of points we’d like to respond to, both embodied in this quote:

[The ITC’s Suprema decision] would likely be viewed unfavorably by the Supreme Court, which recently has shown reluctance about routinely invoking Chevron deference … Furthermore, the en banc majority’s willingness to find inducement liability at a time when direct patent infringement has not yet occurred (the point of importation) is very hard to square with the teachings of [Limelight v.] Akamai.

In truth, we are of two minds (four minds?) regarding this view. We’re deeply sympathetic with arguments that the Supreme Court has become — and should become — increasingly skeptical of blind Chevron deference. Recently, we filed a brief on the 2015 Open Internet Order that, in large part, argued that the FCC does not deserve Chevron deference under King v. Burwell, UARG v. EPA and Michigan v. EPA (among other important cases) along a very similar line of reasoning. However, much as we’d like to generally scale back Chevron deference, in this case we happen to think that the Federal Circuit got it right.

Put simply, “infringe” as used in § 337 plainly includes indirect infringement. Section 271 of the Patent Act makes it clear that indirect infringers are guilty of “infringement.” The legislative history of the section, as well as Supreme Court case law, makes it very clear that § 271 was a codification of both direct and indirect liability.

In taxonomic terms, § 271 codifies “infringement” as a top-level category, with “direct infringement” and “indirect infringement” as two distinct subcategories of infringement. The law further subdivides “indirect infringement” into sub-subcategories, “inducement” and “contributory infringement.” But all of these are “infringement.”

For instance, § 271(b) says that “[w]hoever actively induces infringement of a patent shall be liable as an infringer” (emphasis added). Thus, in terms of § 271, to induce infringement is to commit infringement within the meaning of the patent laws. And in § 337, assuming it follows § 271 (which seems appropriate given Congress’ stated purpose to “make it a more effective remedy for the protection of United States intellectual property rights” (emphasis added)), it must follow that when one imports “articles… that infringe” she can be liable for either (or both) § 271(a) direct infringement or § 271(b) inducement.

Frankly, we think this should end the analysis: There is no Chevron question here because the Tariff Act isn’t ambiguous.

But although it seems clear on the face of § 337 that “infringe” must include indirect infringement, at the very least § 337 is ambiguous and cannot clearly mean only “direct infringement.” Moreover, the history of patent law as well as the structure of the ITC’s powers both cut in favor of the ITC enforcing the Tariff Act against indirect infringers. The ITC’s interpretation of any ambiguity in the term “articles… that infringe” is surely reasonable.

The Ambiguity and History of § 337 Allows for Inducement Liability

Assuming for argument’s sake that § 337’s lack of specificity leaves room for debate as to what “infringe” means, there is nothing that militates definitively against indirect liability being included in § 337. The majority handles any ambiguity of this sort well:

[T]he shorthand phrase “articles that infringe” does not unambiguously exclude inducement of post-importation infringement… By using the word “infringe,” § 337 refers to 35 U.S.C. § 271, the statutory provision defining patent infringement. The word “infringe” does not narrow § 337’s scope to any particular subsections of § 271. As reflected in § 271 and the case law from before and after 1952, “infringement” is a term that encompasses both direct and indirect infringement, including infringement by importation that induces direct infringement of a method claim… Section 337 refers not just to infringement, but to “articles that infringe.” That phrase does not narrow the provision to exclude inducement of post-importation infringement. Rather, the phrase introduces textual uncertainty.

Further, the court notes that it has consistently held that inducement is a valid theory of liability on which to base § 337 cases.

And lest you think that this interpretation would give some new, expansive powers to the ITC (perhaps meriting something like a Brown & Williamson exception to Chevron deference), the ITC is still bound by all the defenses and limitations on indirect liability under § 271. Saying it has authority to police indirect infringement doesn’t give it carte blanche, nor any more power than US district courts currently have in adjudicating indirect infringement. In this case, the court went nowhere near the limits of Chevron in giving deference to the ITC’s decision that “articles… that infringe” emcompasses the well-established (and statutorily defined) law of indirect infringement.

Inducement Liability Isn’t Precluded by Limelight

Nor does the Supreme Court’s Limelight v. Akamai decision present any problem. Limelight is often quoted for the proposition that there can be no inducement liability without direct infringement. And it does stand for that, as do many other cases; that point is not really in any doubt. But what Alden and others (including the dissenters in Suprema) have cited it for is the proposition that inducement liability cannot attach unless all of the elements of inducement have already been practiced at the time of importation. Limelight does not support that contention, however.

Inducement liability contemplates direct infringement, but the direct infringement need not have been practiced by the same entity liable for inducement, nor at the same time as inducement (see, e.g., Standard Oil. v. Nippon). Instead, the direct infringement may come at a later time — and there is no dispute in Suprema regarding whether there was direct infringement (there was, as Suprema notes: “the Commission found that record evidence demonstrated that Mentalix had already directly infringed claim 19 within the United States prior to the initiation of the investigation.”).

Limelight, on the other hand, is about what constitutes the direct infringement element in an inducement case. The sole issue in Limelight was whether this “direct infringement element” required that all of the steps of a method patent be carried out by a single entity or entities acting in concert. In Limelight’s network there was a division of labor, so to speak, between the company and its customers, such that each carried out some of the steps of the method patent at issue. In effect, plaintiffs argued that Limelight should be liable for inducement because it practised some of the steps of the patented method, with the requisite intent that others would carry out the rest of the steps necessary for direct infringement. But neither Limelight nor its customers separately carried out all of the steps necessary for direct infringement.

The Court held (actually, it simply reiterated established law) that the method patent could never be violated unless a single party (or parties acting in concert) carried out all of the steps of the method necessary for direct infringement. Thus it also held that Limelight could not be liable for inducement because, on the facts of that case, none of its customers could ever be liable for the necessary, underlying direct infringement. Again — what was really at issue in Limelight were the requirements to establish the direct infringement necessary to prove inducement.

On remand, the Federal Circuit reinforced the point that Limelight was really about direct infringement and, by extension, who must be involved in the direct infringement element of an inducement claim. According to the court:

We conclude that the facts Akamai presented at trial constitute substantial evidence from which a jury could find that Limelight directed or controlled its customers’ performance of each remaining method step. As such, substantial evidence supports the jury’s verdict that all steps of the claimed methods were performed by or attributable to Limelight. Therefore, Limelight is liable for direct infringement.

The holding of Limelight is simply inapposite to the facts of Suprema. The crux of Suprema is whether the appropriate mens rea existed to support a claim of inducement — not whether the requisite direct infringement occurred or not.

The Structure of § 337 Supports The ITC’s Ability to Block Inducement

Further, as the majority in Suprema notes, the very idea of inducement liability necessarily contemplates that there will be a temporal separation between the event that gives rise to indirect liability and the future direct infringement (required to prove inducement). As the Suprema court briefly noted “Section 337(a)(1)(B)’s ‘sale . . . after importation’ language confirms that the Commission is permitted to focus on post-importation activity to identify the completion of infringement.”

In particular, each of the enforcement powers in § 337(a) contains a clause that, in addition to a prohibition against, e.g., infringing articles at the time of importation, also prohibits “the sale within the United States after importation by the owner, importer, or consignee, of articles[.]” Thus, Congress explicitly contemplated that the ITC would have the power to act upon articles at various points in time, not limiting it to a power effective only at the moment of importation.

Although the particular power to reach into the domestic market has to do with preventing the importer or its agent from making sales, this doesn’t undermine the larger point here: the ITC’s power to prevent infringing articles extends over a range of time. Given that “articles that … infringe” is at the very least ambiguous, and, as per the Federal Circuit (and our own position), this ambiguity allows for indirect infringement, it isn’t a stretch to infer that that Congress intended the ITC to have authority under § 337 to ban the import of articles that induce infringement that occurs only after the time of importation..

To interpret § 337 otherwise would be to render it absurd and to create a giant loophole that would enable infringers to easily circumvent the ITC’s enforcement powers.

A Dissent from the Dissent

The dissent also takes a curious approach to § 271 by mixing inducement and contributory infringement, and generally making a confusing mess of the two. For instance, Judge Dyk says

At the time of importation, the scanners neither directly infringe nor induce infringement… Instead, these staple articles may or may not ultimately be used to infringe… depending upon whether and how they are combined with domestically developed software after importation into the United States (emphasis added).

Whether or not the goods were “staples articles” (and thus potentially capable of substantial noninfringing uses) has nothing to do with whether or not there was inducement. Section 271 makes a very clear delineation between inducement in § 271(b) and contributory infringement in § 271(c). While a staple article of commerce capable of substantial noninfringing uses will not serve as the basis for a contributory infringement claim, it is irrelevant whether or not goods are such “staples” for purposes of establishing inducement.

The boundaries of inducement liability, by contrast, are focused on the intent of the actors: If there is an intent to induce, whether or not there is a substantial noninfringing use, there can be a violation of § 271. Contributory infringement and inducement receive treatment in separate paragraphs of § 271 and are separate doctrines comprising separate elements. This separation is so evident on the face of the law as well as in its history that the Supreme Court read the doctrine into copyright in Grokster — where, despite a potentially large number of non-infringing uses, the intent to induce infringement was sufficient to find liability.

Parting Thoughts on Chevron

We have some final thoughts on the Chevron question, because this is rightly a sore point in administrative law. In this case we think that the analysis should have ended at step one. Although the Federal Circuit began with an assumption of ambiguity, it was being generous to the appellants. Did Congress speak with clear intent? We think so. Section 271 very clearly includes direct infringement as well as indirect infringement within its definition of what constitutes infringement of a patent. When § 337 references “articles … that infringe” it seems fairly obvious that Congress intended the ITC to be able to enforce the prohibitions in § 271 in the context of imported goods.

But even if we advance to step two of the Chevron analysis, the ITC’s construction of § 337 is plainly permissible — and far from expansive. By asserting its authority here the ITC is simply policing the importation of infringing goods (which it clearly has the power to do), and doing so in the case of goods that indirectly infringe (a concept that has been part of US law for a very long time). If “infringe” as used in the Tariff Act is ambiguous, the ITC’s interpretation of it to include both indirect as well as direct infringement seems self-evidently reasonable.

Under the dissent’s (and Alden’s) interpretation of § 337, all that would be required to evade the ITC would be to import only the basic components of an article such that at the moment of importation there was no infringement. Once reassembled within the United States, the ITC’s power to prevent the sale of infringing goods would be nullified. Section 337 would thus be read to simply write out the entire “indirect infringement” subdivision of § 271 — an inference that seems like a much bigger stretch than that “infringement” under § 337 means all infringement under § 271. Congress was more than capable of referring only to “direct infringement” in § 337 if that’s what it intended.

Much as we would like to see Chevron limited, not every agency case is the place to fight this battle. If we are to have agencies, and we are to have a Chevron doctrine, there will be instances of valid deference to agency interpretations — regardless of how broadly or narrowly Chevron is interpreted. The ITC wasn’t making a power grab in Suprema, nor was its reading of the statute unexpected, inconsistent with its past practice, or expansive.

In short, Suprema doesn’t break any new statutory interpretation ground, nor present a novel question of “deep economic or political significance” akin to the question at issue in King v. Burwell. Like it or not, there will be no roots of an anti-Chevron-deference revolution growing out of Suprema.

In Administrative Law, Copyright, Google, Intellectual Property, International, International Trade, Patent, Platforms, Regulation, Supreme Court , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Teslas’s New Patent Policy: Long Live the Patent System!

Adam Mossoff —  13 August 2014

[First posted to the CPIP Blog on June 17, 2014]

Last Thursday, Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla Motors, issued an announcement on the company’s blog with a catchy title: “All Our Patent Are Belong to You.” Commentary in social media and on blogs, as well as in traditional newspapers, jumped to the conclusion that Tesla is abandoning its patents and making them “freely” available to the public for whomever wants to use them. As with all things involving patented innovation these days, the reality of Tesla’s new patent policy does not match the PR spin or the buzz on the Internet.

The reality is that Tesla is not disclaiming its patent rights, despite Musk’s title to his announcement or his invocation in his announcement of the tread-worn cliché today that patents impede innovation. In fact, Tesla’s new policy is an example of Musk exercising patent rights, not abandoning them.

If you’re not puzzled by Tesla’s announcement, you should be. This is because patents are a type of property right that secures the exclusive rights to make, use, or sell an invention for a limited period of time. These rights do not come cheap — inventions cost time, effort, and money to create and companies like Tesla then exploit these property rights in spending even more time, effort and money in converting inventions into viable commercial products and services sold in the marketplace. Thus, if Tesla’s intention is to make its ideas available for public use, why, one may wonder, did it bother to expend the tremendous resources in acquiring the patents in the first place?

The key to understanding this important question lies in a single phrase in Musk’s announcement that almost everyone has failed to notice: “Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.” (emphasis added)

What does “in good faith” mean in this context? Fortunately, one intrepid reporter at the L.A. Times asked this question, and the answer from Musk makes clear that this new policy is not an abandonment of patent rights in favor of some fuzzy notion of the public domain, but rather it’s an exercise of his company’s patent rights: “Tesla will allow other manufacturers to use its patents in “good faith” – essentially barring those users from filing patent-infringement lawsuits against [Tesla] or trying to produce knockoffs of Tesla’s cars.” In the legalese known to patent lawyers and inventors the world over, this is not an abandonment of Tesla’s patents, this is what is known as a cross license.

In plain English, here’s the deal that Tesla is offering to manufacturers and users of its electrical car technology: in exchange for using Tesla’s patents, the users of Tesla’s patents cannot file patent infringement lawsuits against Tesla if Tesla uses their other patents. In other words, this is a classic deal made between businesses all of the time — you can use my property and I can use your property, and we cannot sue each other. It’s a similar deal to that made between two neighbors who agree to permit each other to cross each other’s backyard. In the context of patented innovation, this agreement is more complicated, but it is in principle the same thing: if automobile manufacturer X decides to use Tesla’s patents, and Tesla begins infringing X’s patents on other technology, then X has agreed through its prior use of Tesla’s patents that it cannot sue Tesla. Thus, each party has licensed the other to make, use and sell their respective patented technologies; in patent law parlance, it’s a “cross license.”

The only thing unique about this cross licensing offer is that Tesla publicly announced it as an open offer for anyone willing to accept it. This is not a patent “free for all,” and it certainly is not tantamount to Tesla “taking down the patent wall.” These are catchy sound bites, but they in fact obfuscate the clear business-minded nature of this commercial decision.

For anyone perhaps still doubting what is happening here, the same L.A Times story further confirms that Tesla is not abandoning the patent system. As stated to the reporter: “Tesla will continue to seek patents for its new technology to prevent others from poaching its advancements.” So much for the much ballyhooed pronouncements last week of how Tesla’s new patent (licensing) policy “reminds us of the urgent need for patent reform”! Musk clearly believes that the patent system is working just great for the new technological innovation his engineers are creating at Tesla right now.

For those working in the innovation industries, Tesla’s decision to cross license its old patents makes sense. Tesla Motors has already extracted much of the value from these old patents: Musk was able to secure venture capital funding for his startup company and he was able to secure for Tesla a dominant position in the electrical car market through his exclusive use of this patented innovation. (Venture capitalists consistently rely on patents in making investment decisions, and for anyone who doubts this need to watch only a few episodes of Shark Tank.) Now that everyone associates radical, cutting-edge innovation with Tesla, Musk can shift in his strategic use of his company’s assets, including his intellectual property rights, such as relying more heavily on the goodwill associated with the Tesla trademark. This is clear, for instance, from the statement to the LA Times that companies or individuals agreeing to the “good faith” terms of Tesla’s license agree not to make “knockoffs of Tesla’s cars.”

There are other equally important commercial reasons for Tesla adopting its new cross-licensing policy, but the point has been made. Tesla’s new cross-licensing policy for its old patents is not Musk embracing “the open source philosophy” (as he asserts in his announcement). This may make good PR given the overheated rhetoric today about the so-called “broken patent system,” but it’s time people recognize the difference between PR and a reasonable business decision that reflects a company that has used (old) patents to acquire a dominant market position and is now changing its business model given these successful developments.

At a minimum, people should recognize that Tesla is not declaring that it will not bring patent infringement lawsuits, but only that it will not sue people with whom it has licensed its patented innovation. This is not, contrary to one law professor’s statement, a company “refrain[ing] from exercising their patent rights to the fullest extent of the law.” In licensing its patented technology, Tesla is in fact exercising its patent rights to the fullest extent of the law, and that is exactly what the patent system promotes in the myriad business models and innovative

In Intellectual Property, Patent, Regulation , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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The Value of Injunctions — Douglas Dynamics v. Buyers Products Co. (Fed. Cir. May 21, 2013)

Adam Mossoff —  25 July 2013

Over at the blog for the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property, I posted a short essay discussing the Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Douglas Dynamics v. Buyers Products (Fed. Cir. May 21, 2013).  Here’s a small taste:

The Federal Circuit’s recent decision in Douglas Dynamics, LLC, v. Buyers Products Co. (Fed. Cir. May 21, 2013) is very important given the widespread, albeit mistaken, belief today that the Supreme Court’s decision in eBay v. MercExchange (2005) established that damages and not injunctions are the presumptive remedy for patent infringement. ….

On appeal, Chief Judge Randall Rader resoundingly disagreed with Judge Conley’s belief that the “public interest” is always better served by the introduction of a new competitor who is selling cheaper products.  This is what happened in this case, as Douglas Dynamics and Buyers Products Company are competitors in the sale of snowplow blades.  Instead, Chief Judge Rader recognized that its act of infringement as such is what gave Buyers Products Company its market advantage in undercutting Douglas Dynamics’ prices.  Because it did not have to incur Douglas Dynamics’ ex ante expenses in engaging in innovative research and development, Buyers Products Company’s infringement permitted it the economic advantage of being able to undercut Douglas Dynamics prices’ and thus enter the allegedly “untapped market segment” of cheaper snowplow blades. It was precisely this expansion of a consumer market that the district court relied on in its denial of Douglas Dynamics’ requested injunction. In sum, the district court used an infringement-created expansion of the market to justify denying an injunction and awarding a compulsory license to the patent-owner, which effectively rewarded Buyer Products Company for its act of infringement.

In reversing the district court’s award of a reasonable royalty, Chief Judge Rader explained the basic economic principle of dynamic efficiency that animates the Patent Act in securing property rights to inventors in their patented innovation ….

As bloggers are wont to say, go read the whole thing.

In Intellectual Property, Patent , , , , , , , ,
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The SHIELD Act: When Bad Economic Studies Make Bad Laws

Adam Mossoff —  15 March 2013

Earlier this month, Representatives Peter DeFazio and Jason Chaffetz picked up the gauntlet from President Obama’s comments on February 14 at a Google-sponsored Internet Q&A on Google+ that “our efforts at patent reform only went about halfway to where we need to go” and that he would like “to see if we can build some additional consensus on smarter patent laws.” So, Reps. DeFazio and Chaffetz introduced on March 1 the Saving High-tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes (SHIELD) Act, which creates a “losing plaintiff patent-owner pays” litigation system for a single type of patent owner—patent licensing companies that purchase and license patents in the marketplace (and who sue infringers when infringers refuse their requests to license). To Google, to Representative DeFazio, and to others, these patent licensing companies are “patent trolls” who are destroyers of all things good—and the SHIELD Act will save us all from these dastardly “trolls” (is a troll anything but dastardly?).

As I and other scholars have pointed out, the “patent troll” moniker is really just a rhetorical epithet that lacks even an agreed-upon definition.  The term is used loosely enough that it sometimes covers and sometimes excludes universities, Thomas Edison, Elias Howe (the inventor of the lockstitch in 1843), Charles Goodyear (the inventor of vulcanized rubber in 1839), and even companies like IBM.  How can we be expected to have a reasonable discussion about patent policy when our basic terms of public discourse shift in meaning from blog to blog, article to article, speaker to speaker?  The same is true of the new term, “Patent Assertion Entities,” which sounds more neutral, but has the same problem in that it also lacks any objective definition or usage.

Setting aside this basic problem of terminology for the moment, the SHIELD Act is anything but a “smarter patent law” (to quote President Obama). Some patent scholars, like Michael Risch, have begun to point out some of the serious problems with the SHIELD Act, such as its selectively discriminatory treatment of certain types of patent-owners.  Moreover, as Professor Risch ably identifies, this legislation was so cleverly drafted to cover only a limited set of a specific type of patent-owner that it ended up being too clever. Unlike the previous version introduced last year, the 2013 SHIELD Act does not even apply to the flavor-of-the-day outrage over patent licensing companies—the owner of the podcast patent. (Although you wouldn’t know this if you read the supporters of the SHIELD Act like the EFF who falsely claim that this law will stop patent-owners like the podcast patent-owning company.)

There are many things wrong with the SHIELD Act, but one thing that I want to highlight here is that it based on a falsehood: the oft-repeated claim that two Boston University researchers have proven in a study that “patent troll suits cost American technology companies over $29 billion in 2011 alone.”  This is what Rep. DeFazio said when he introduced the SHIELD Act on March 1. This claim was repeated yesterday by House Members during a hearing on “Abusive Patent Litigation.” The claim that patent licensing companies cost American tech companies $29 billion in a single year (2011) has become gospel since this study, The Direct Costs from NPE Disputes, was released last summer on the Internet. (Another name of patent licensing companies is “Non Practicing Entity” or “NPE.”)  A Google search of “patent troll 29 billion” produces 191,000 hits. A Google search of “NPE 29 billion” produces 605,000 hits. Such is the making of conventional wisdom.

The problem with conventional wisdom is that it is usually incorrect, and the study that produced the claim of “$29 billion imposed by patent trolls” is no different. The $29 billion cost study is deeply and fundamentally flawed, as explained by two noted professors, David Schwartz and Jay Kesan, who are also highly regarded for their empirical and economic work in patent law.  In their essay, Analyzing the Role of Non-Practicing Entities in the Patent System, also released late last summer, they detailed at great length serious methodological and substantive flaws in The Direct Costs from NPE Disputes. Unfortunately, the Schwartz and Kesan essay has gone virtually unnoticed in the patent policy debates, while the $29 billion cost claim has through repetition become truth.

In the hope that at least a few more people might discover the Schwartz and Kesan essay, I will briefly summarize some of their concerns about the study that produced the $29 billion cost figure.  This is not merely an academic exercise.  Since Rep. DeFazio explicitly relied on the $29 billion cost claim to justify the SHIELD Act, and he and others keep repeating it, it’s important to know if it is true, because it’s being used to drive proposed legislation in the real world.  If patent legislation is supposed to secure innovation, then it behooves us to know if this legislation is based on actual facts. Yet, as Schwartz and Kesan explain in their essay, the $29 billion cost claim is based on a study that is fundamentally flawed in both substance and methodology.

In terms of its methodological flaws, the study supporting the $29 billion cost claim employs an incredibly broad definition of “patent troll” that covers almost every person, corporation or university that sues someone for infringing a patent that it is not currently being used to manufacture a product at that moment.  While the meaning of the “patent troll” epithet shifts depending on the commentator, reporter, blogger, or scholar who is using it, one would be extremely hard pressed to find anyone embracing this expansive usage in patent scholarship or similar commentary today.

There are several reasons why the extremely broad definition of “NPE” or “patent troll” in the study is unusual even compared to uses of this term in other commentary or studies. First, and most absurdly, this definition, by necessity, includes every university in the world that sues someone for infringing one of its patents, as universities don’t manufacture goods.  Second, it includes every individual and start-up company who plans to manufacture a patented invention, but is forced to sue an infringer-competitor who thwarted these business plans by its infringing sales in the marketplace.  Third, it includes commercial firms throughout the wide-ranging innovation industries—from high tech to biotech to traditional manufacturing—that have at least one patent among a portfolio of thousands that is not being used at the moment to manufacture a product because it may be “well outside the area in which they make products” and yet they sue infringers of this patent (the quoted language is from the study). So, according to this study, every manufacturer becomes an “NPE” or “patent troll” if it strays too far from what somebody subjectively defines as its rightful “area” of manufacturing. What company is not branded an “NPE” or “patent troll” under this definition, or will necessarily become one in the future given inevitable changes in one’s business plans or commercial activities? This is particularly true for every person or company whose only current opportunity to reap the benefit of their patented invention is to license the technology or to litigate against the infringers who refuse license offers.

So, when almost every possible patent-owning person, university, or corporation is defined as a “NPE” or “patent troll,” why are we surprised that a study that employs this virtually boundless definition concludes that they create $29 billion in litigation costs per year?  The only thing surprising is that the number isn’t even higher!

There are many other methodological flaws in the $29 billion cost study, such as its explicit assumption that patent litigation costs are “too high” without providing any comparative baseline for this conclusion.  What are the costs in other areas of litigation, such as standard commercial litigation, tort claims, or disputes over complex regulations?  We are not told.  What are the historical costs of patent litigation?  We are not told.  On what basis then can we conclude that $29 billion is “too high” or even “too low”?  We’re supposed to be impressed by a number that exists in a vacuum and that lacks any empirical context by which to evaluate it.

The $29 billion cost study also assumes that all litigation transaction costs are deadweight losses, which would mean that the entire U.S. court system is a deadweight loss according to the terms of this study.  Every lawsuit, whether a contract, tort, property, regulatory or constitutional dispute is, according to the assumption of the $29 billion cost study, a deadweight loss.  The entire U.S. court system is an inefficient cost imposed on everyone who uses it.  Really?  That’s an assumption that reduces itself to absurdity—it’s a self-imposed reductio ad absurdum!

In addition to the methodological problems, there are also serious concerns about the trustworthiness and quality of the actual data used to reach the $29 billion claim in the study.  All studies rely on data, and in this case, the $29 billion study used data from a secret survey done by RPX of its customers.  For those who don’t know, RPX’s business model is to defend companies against these so-called “patent trolls.”  So, a company whose business model is predicated on hyping the threat of “patent trolls” does a secret survey of its paying customers, and it is now known that RPX informed its customers in the survey that their answers would be used to lobby for changes in the patent laws.

As every reputable economist or statistician will tell you, such conditions encourage exaggeration and bias in a data sample by motivating participation among those who support changes to the patent law.  Such a problem even has a formal name in economic studies: self-selection bias.  But one doesn’t need to be an economist or statistician to be able to see the problems in relying on the RPX data to conclude that NPEs cost $29 billion per year. As the classic adage goes, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Even worse, as I noted above, the RPX survey was confidential.  RPX has continued to invoke “client confidences” in refusing to disclose its actual customer survey or the resulting data, which means that the data underlying the $29 billion claim is completely unknown and unverifiable for anyone who reads the study.  Don’t worry, the researchers have told us in a footnote in the study, they looked at the data and confirmed it is good.  Again, it doesn’t take economic or statistical training to know that something is not right here. Another classic cliché comes to mind at this point: “it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.”

In fact, keeping data secret in a published study violates well-established and longstanding norms in all scientific research that data should always be made available for testing and verification by third parties.  No peer-reviewed medical or scientific journal would publish a study based on a secret data set in which the researchers have told us that we should simply trust them that the data is accurate.  Its use of secret data probably explains why the $29 billion study has not yet appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, and, if economics has any claim to being an actual science, this study never will.  If a study does not meet basic scientific standards for verifying data, then why are Reps. DeFazio and Chaffetz relying on it to propose national legislation that directly impacts the patent system and future innovation?  If heads-in-the-clouds academics would know to reject such a study as based on unverifiable, likely biased claptrap, then why are our elected officials embracing it to create real-world legal rules?

And, to continue our running theme of classic clichés, there’s the rub. The more one looks at the actual legal requirements of the SHIELD Act, the more, in the words of Professor Risch, one is left “scratching one’s head” in bewilderment.  The more one looks at the supporting studies and arguments in favor of the SHIELD Act, the more one is left, in the words of Professor Risch, “scratching one’s head.”  The more and more one thinks about the SHIELD Act, the more one realizes what it is—legislation that has been crafted at the behest of the politically powerful (such as an Internet company who can get the President to do a special appearance on its own social media website) to have the government eliminate a smaller, publicly reviled, and less politically-connected group.

In short, people may have legitimate complaints about the ways in which the court system in the U.S. generally has problems.  Commentators and Congresspersons could even consider revising the general legal rules governing patent ligtiation for all plaintiffs and defendants to make the ligitation system work better or more efficiently (by some established metric).   Professor Risch has done exactly this in a recent Wired op-ed.  But it’s time to call a spade a spade: the SHIELD Act is a classic example of rent-seeking, discriminatory legislation.

In Google, Intellectual Property, Law & Economics, Patent, Platforms, Regulation , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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TiVo v. EchoStar: A study in abusing the courts instead of just respecting the patent

Geoffrey Manne —  22 November 2010

On November 9, the en banc US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard oral arguments in an extremely important patent infringement case (mp3 of oral argument here). Hanging in the balance are the very incentives for technological innovation and the seeds of economic progress. The arguments made in the case by the infringer, EchoStar, would have the effect of reducing the certainty and thus the efficacy of patent rights by weakening the ability of the courts to define and enforce patents clearly, quickly and efficiently. While for some commentators this is probably a feature, and not a bug, of EchoStar’s position, I find its stance and its claims to be extremely troublesome.

The litigation, TiVo v. EchoStar, has been raging for more than six years, in which time TiVo has, in fact, prevailed at every turn. In brief, the substantive and procedural history of the case is as follows: The case revolves around TiVo’s valuable patent for digital video recorder (DVR) technology. In April 2006, a jury found that EchoStar had infringed TiVo’s patents and awarded TiVo close to $74 million in damages. The jury also found that EchoStar had acted willfully in infringing the patent. The District Court granted TiVo’s motion for an injunction, which required EchoStar to disable all DVR units for which it had not paid compensatory damages. In the ongoing litigation, EchoStar does not challenge the initial finding of infringement, the initial damage award, or the initial order for injunctive relief. Instead, it seeks to avoid a contempt citation issued by the District Court, in exercise of its continuing jurisdiction over the case, after EchoStar introduced a second device which purported to “design around” the original TiVo patent. After noting the similarity between EchoStar’s original and modified devices, the court conducted a short trial on the question of infringement, after which the court held that EchoStar’s modified device still infringed TiVo’s patent.

Upon examining the technology, the District Court found that EchoStar’s purported design workaround did not embody a new and independent device. Instead EchoStar consciously modified its original infringing device in small ways that it may have believed would preserve its desired functionality without violating TiVo’s ‘389 patent, but failed instead to remove itself from the reach of either TiVo’s patent or the court’s earlier order.

At no point prior to its deployment of its altered technology did EchoStar ask the District Court, which had continuing jurisdiction over the case, to review the new design for patent infringement. EchoStar announced the re-design in a January 2008 press release and in the following months, two years after the original jury verdict of infringement, the District Court learned of the use of the modified EchoStar device.

In light of its finding of near identity between EchoStar’s original and modified DVRs, the District Court relied on KSM Fastening Systems, Inc. v. H.A. Jones Co., Inc., 776 F.2d 1522 (Fed. Cir. 1985), to enter a contempt order against EchoStar for its violation of the original injunctive decree (first finding the two devices to be substantially similar and then assessing in a contempt hearing whether EchoStar’s unilateral deployment of the second device violated the Court’s injunction). EchoStar then sought a stay of the injunction pending appeal. The Federal Circuit granted a stay, but earlier this year it upheld the district court’s contempt finding. The matter was then rescheduled for an en banc hearing. During this entire time, EchoStar has continued to market and use its infringing devices to its immense profit. The question before the en banc Court is whether the District Court’s contempt decree was proper under the controlling precedent.

In essence, every federal judge who has heard this case (save the lone dissenter in the appeal from which the Federal Circuit rehearing was brought) has determined that TiVo was wronged and is owed significant monetary and equitable compensation from EchoStar, as well as the disablement of the adjudicated DVR devices. However, EchoStar has yet to curtail its infringing activity. EchoStar now argues that it should be allowed to continue to evade the judgments against it by forcing TiVo and the courts to endure yet another full trial—to start anew down an almost identical path assessing the propriety of EchoStar’s slightly-modified technology—rather than enforce the existing injunction.

EchoStar is seemingly within the reasonable bounds of due process to suggest that such an outcome might be required if its new technology is sufficiently different than its old. But the question is really one of process: who gets to decide if the technology is sufficiently similar—the District Court that heard the original case and issued the original injunction, or EchoStar? Seen this way, it is evident that the costly, strategic behavior lurking just under the surface of this case and that pervades EchoStar’s conduct belies the innocence of its arguments and points out the enormous cost that establishing such precedent could impose on innovation and the economy more broadly.

At root, this case tests whether courts can realistically enforce their judgments, including, as in this case, the judgment that a patentee has been denied the right to control the use of its patent. The central legal question presented is when a court may enforce its own injunction against an infringer who makes small tweaks to its infringing technology in an effort to avoid the reach of the injunction. Certainly, we want to encourage so-called “work-arounds” that add to the stock of innovation in our economy. But proponents of EchoStar’s view ignore or underweigh the effect on the original innovation itself, as well as the courts. If, by virtue of small tweaks, an infringer can tie up a patent in court for so long that it has the potential to run out the patent’s term, render its exclusivity period worthless, and all the while steal business from the patent-holder in violation of the patentee’s Constitutionally-empowered protection, then initial innovation will be sharply discouraged, to the public’s detriment. The courts should not (and the KSM case seems to me to make clear that they need not) abet this process.

And EchoStar is indeed stealing business from TiVo. The trial judge issued an injunction in this case precisely because EchoStar cannot compensate TiVo for the harm done once EchoStar had built its customer base on the back of TiVo’s unlicensed technology. Since the injunction was issued more than four years ago, EchoStar has continued to build and service its customer base, and has even gone so far as to argue that the lower court’s decision should not be upheld because doing so would harm EchoStar’s customers. These are the very customers who, if EchoStar had not violated TiVo’s intellectual property rights or if the injunction had been enforced, would never have been EchoStar’s customers at all!

Meanwhile, the uncertainty engendered by delayed enforcement and the curtailment of injunctive relief further erodes the value of patents and complicates, rather than eases, the process of economic development. In this case as in others, a potential licensee has chosen to misappropriate patented technology (and take its chances in court) rather than pay for it or forebear from its use. If EchoStar prevails, similarly-situated companies will have even less incentive to seek out deals with patent-holders, instead relying on the courts to carve out for them an extended period of unlicensed use with a bill that comes due years later—assuming the patent holder can afford to litigate for years—and in an amount almost certainly far below the actual benefit conferred.

It is difficult to see how either due process or economic efficiency is furthered by EchoStar’s position. This case demonstrates that a determined infringer can make minor changes, drag out judicial proceedings, and seek to run out the clock on a patent, thereby squandering both judicial resources as well as incentives for innovation. This is particularly true for devices that involve software or other complex products where inconsequential changes can be exaggerated. An EchoStar victory in this case will dim technological progress and diminish the role of the courts in enforcing the property rights that facilitate that progress.

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