A Study On The Calculation Method Of US Patent Infringement Damage Compensation And Its Enlightenment

Patent damages issues are very complex, these have become a common problem forjudiciary by every countries. Especially patent damages like computers, cell phones which havecomplex systems. This kind of electricities are assembled by many parts, such as memory chips,microprocessors and radio antenna, with which are all covered patents. For example, only Appleget over200patents on iPhone and its parts. If any of these200patents have been violated, like aradio antenna patent, how much money should Apple claims? At first glance, the answer seemsjust to be the value of a radio antenna, but if the electronics store doesn’t sold radio antennasseparately, it will be difficult to price. The problem will be more complex if a custom is eager tomake a phone call or check an email, he will likely to be willing to pay more for a radio antenna.Problems like these will affect accurate assessment of the radio antenna’s value.In order to solve this thorny problem, this paper will focus on how to calculate damageswhen the patent of a component of a complex system being violated. A complex system is usuallya combination of intricate parts together, which makes the damages calculation even more difficult.This paper presents a method to calculate the patent infringement damages in a complex system.The first part of this paper cited a case in U.S. which will lead us to know how Americans calculatepatent infringement damages, starting to analysis by the main issue in the case. The second partwill analyze how to calculate the amount of damages in the patent litigation, including a briefdescription of the ejaculation possibility of using “lost profits”. This part focuses on introducing“reasonable patent licensing fees”, which is more commonly used, as well as two approachesmainly used to derive an appropriate patent license fees. The third part will review the recent U.S.court rulings, including the case of Microsoft Corp.v.Lucent Technologies,Inc and how thesedecisions affect the calculation of patent damages under a complex system. This article focuses ontwo aspects of these decisions:(1) adhere to the allocation rules to ensure that the result of thepatent licensing fees can be consistent with the damages caused by infringement;(2) select themost appropriate methods to derive patent licensing fees. The fourth part of this paper summed upa method to calculate patent damages under a complex system according to the recent U.S. cases’decisions to follow the four-step which is used in Lucent case:(1) by determine the appropriate“smallest salable unit” to apportion patent license fees accurately;(2) determine the patentlicensing using fee’s profit rate,multiplied by the number of affected units, in order to get a toplimit of a reasonable ceiling patent licensing fees;(3) According to the distribution of profits based on commercial factors or other negotiating factors, allocating the reasonable upper limit of thepatent licensing fees between patentee and the infringer, the fee that the patentee get is thereasonable part of the patent licensing fees. The fifth part of this paper is suggestions andenlightenments given to China’s Patent Law according to the study of patent infringementdamages’ compensative calculation methods in U.S.