Delaware District Court Judge Andrews ruled on a very creative damages analysis. And when we say “creative” we mean really, really outlandishly creative.
Plaintiff’s expert, Dr. Christine Meyer, determined the hypothetical negotiation date for her patent infringement damages analysis and then recalculated a jury verdict award from a separate and unrelated patent infringement matter (namely, Uniloc USA, Inc. v. EA) to use as her anchoring point for her Georgia Pacific analysis.
Yes, you read that correctly, and we represented it faithfully:
It appears from Judge Andrew’s opinion that Dr. Meyer attempted to introduce an unrelated jury verdict award as a “comparable license” analog by relying upon a technical expert’s analysis of both the unrelated verdict-patents and their relative value as compared to the patents in suit. Such malarkey was unacceptable and the motion to exclude on this issue was granted.
Apart from this unrelated jury verdict “analytic” sideshow, Judge Andrews offered insight into lump sum and running royalty rates.
Dr. Meyer’s lump sum opinion was not excluded for looking into the future and thereby forecasting hypothetical future sales. But Judge Andrews suggests that such analysis would have been excluded if she had ultimately settled upon a running royalty rate:
Judge Andrews thereby clarifies a subtle, but important (and now specifically-articulated) rule for lump-sum opinions as necessarily distinct from running royalty opinions.