What an IP Case Is Worth: A Guide to Intellectual Property Damages

72 questions on what an IP case is worth, answered and cited by the UpLaw editorial team.

• Are punitive damages available in IP cases?
• Can a copyright owner sue before the Copyright Office acts?
• Can a patentee recover lost profits in a multi-competitor market?
• Can a trademark court adjust the award it finds inadequate?
• Can a U.S. patentee recover foreign lost profits?
• Can equitable defenses reduce an IP recovery?
• Can you illustrate an improper apportionment theory?
• Can you work a lost-profits example both ways?
• Did Halo make trebling automatic?
• Did Romag make willfulness irrelevant in trademark cases?
• Does an injunction count as "damages"?
• How can a damages expert be excluded?
• How can trade-secret damages stack in practice?
• How did Halo change patent enhancement?
• How does apportionment apply to standard-essential patents?
• How does Grain Processing defeat lost profits?
• How does the article-of-manufacture fight play out in practice?
• How does the copyright profits burden-shift work?
• How does the statutory-damages menu create settlement pressure?
• How do the DMCA safe harbors affect copyright damages?
• Is the headline verdict usually the final number?
• Should you extrapolate case value from a reported verdict?
• What are the four Panduit factors for lost profits?
• What are the four statutory worlds of IP damages?
• What are the Georgia-Pacific factors?
• What did Romag v. Fossil decide about willfulness?
• What does the famous smartphone verdict teach about headline numbers?
• What does the "in no event less than" clause of Section 284 accomplish?
• What does the IP damages distribution actually look like?
• What exemplary damages does the DTSA authorize?
• What happened to the 25% rule of thumb?
• What is corrective advertising as a damages measure?
• What is counterfeiting's nuclear option?
• What is the apportionment requirement in patent damages?
• What is the "book of wisdom" in royalty analysis?
• What is the copyright statutory damages menu?
• What is the difference between lost profits and a reasonable royalty?
• What is the DTSA's three-part damages menu?
• What is the fragility at the heart of trade-secret damages?
• What is the hypothetical negotiation?
• What is the patent marking trap?
• What is the Section 412 registration gate?
• What is the smallest salable patent-practicing unit?
• What is the standard for attorney's fees in patent cases?
• What is the standard for copyright attorney's fees?
• What is the ten-step method for estimating an IP case's value?
• What limits a copyright profits recovery?
• What makes design patents a uniquely powerful damages weapon?
• What pre-trial remedy does the DTSA offer?
• What should careful analysts use instead of averages?
• What three things can a prevailing trademark owner recover?
• What two features make the copyright statutory menu formidable?
• What two truths about IP damages sit uncomfortably together?
• When may a patentee use the entire market value rule?
• Why are IP damages "built, not measured"?
• Why are reported verdicts a biased sample?
• Why are venue fights damages fights?
• Why can an injunction be worth more than damages?
• Why do counterfeiting suits distort IP damages datasets?
• Why do huge IP verdicts so often get reduced?
• Why do most IP cases never reach a damages verdict?
• Why do opinions of counsel still matter after Halo?
• Why do patents sit at the top of the IP damages distribution?
• Why do trademark courts lean on disgorgement?
• Why have trade-secret verdicts grown?
• Why is an IP damages award not a fact about the world?
• Why is averaging across the four IP regimes misleading?
• Why is the AI training-data damages arithmetic "vertiginous"?
• Why is the damages expert often the most important witness?
• Why is validity "the number behind the number"?
• Why is willfulness the universal multiplier?
• Why should you distrust "the average IP damages award is X"?