Today Public Knowledge, Engine, and EFF filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court about patent damages. This guest post is by former EFF apprentice legal intern Charles Duan, now the Director of Public Knowledge’s Patent Reform Project. It is cross-posted from Public Knowledge’s blog. Today is the release date of the new Star Wars sequel, and it’s also the due date for some amicus briefs in two big Supreme Court patent cases. And though the famed space opera has not much to do with patent law, the story of these two cases still shares a piece of the drama, the David versus Goliath battles, and the competing stories of power and force. The cases, Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics and Stryker Corp. v. Zimmer, Inc., deal with a provision of U.S. patent law called “enhanced damages.” The law itself says that when someone infringes a patent, courts are allowed to increase the money awarded by up to three times. Although the text of the law does not…
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