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If You Are Sued, or You Sue

The short version

Nine decisions, and three of them are halves of pairs that have to be read whole. They cover what you forfeit by challenging a patent at the Patent Office, the gap between infringing on purpose and being punished for it, what makes a damages number admissible, and how far a U.S. patent reaches.

No half of any pair is published alone here, because on its own each one points a reader in a direction the law does not actually go.

Three of these decisions share a shape. In each pair, the first case creates an exposure and the second bounds it, and a reader who sees only one comes away with a confident belief that is wrong.

Estoppel. Caltech alone says inter partes review is a trap that forfeits every argument you did not make. Ingenico alone says estoppel barely matters. Neither is true. Estoppel is broad on document-based grounds and does not reach grounds an IPR could never have heard.

Willfulness. SRI alone says being found willful means paying multiples. Columbia alone says enhancement is nearly unobtainable. Together they say the real structure: a jury decides whether you infringed on purpose, a judge decides separately whether to punish you, and what the judge weighs is largely how you behaved after the suit was filed.

Foreign damages. Brumfield alone says a U.S. patent reaches revenue earned abroad. Columbia is where a patent owner tried that route and lost it on a jury instruction, with the doctrinal question left open. The framework applies; the causation still has to be proved.

The Decisions

Caltech v. Broadcom The petition is a single, final opportunity to raise every patent and printed-publication argument, so the prior-art search has to be finished before you file. Read the Case Ingenico v. IOENGINE The same document can be estopped in one argument and freely usable in another. A launch email and an archived downloads page proved public use. Read the Case SRI v. Cisco Willfulness is not a heightened test requiring egregious conduct. Cisco lost because it had no reasonable defense, with no evidence of copying or concealment. Read the Case Columbia v. Gen Digital Every improvement Columbia identified was real, described in the patent, and absent from the claims. The $185 million judgment was vacated. Read the Case Hikma v. Amarin What matters is whether you encouraged the infringing use, not whether a reader could take your words that way. Encouragement can still be implicit. Read the Case EcoFactor v. Google A royalty number pulled from a license's preamble, rather than its terms, is not evidence. The lesson lands at signing time, not at trial. Read the Case Brumfield v. IBG Foreign revenue can be reached by U.S. patent damages if domestic infringement caused it. The framework applies; the causation still has to be proved. Read the Case Lynk Labs v. Samsung A published application is prior art from the day it was filed, under the pre-AIA statute. A search that filters by publication date can miss it. Read the Case Socket Solutions v. Import Global Proving your patent is valid and infringed does not by itself get you an injunction. Decided August 4, 2026, so check it is still current. Read the Case

What These Pages Do Not Decide

  • Whether to file an inter partes review, or what grounds a petition should raise. That is litigation strategy with forfeiture attached.
  • Whether any particular conduct is willful, or whether any exposure is real.
  • Whether a company should review third-party patents. No decision here addresses that question, and one of them is frequently misread as though it does.
  • Whether any documentation, integration guide or tutorial induces infringement, whether your licenses support a royalty, whether your foreign revenue is exposed, or whether you could obtain an injunction. Each of those is a determination on specific facts.

Educational, not legal advice. Every quotation is verified against the court's own opinion. Consult a qualified patent attorney about your actual exposure.

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