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Text: We reject Brooks Furniture for another reason: It is so demanding that it would appear to render §285 largely superfluous. We have long recognized a common-law exception to the general “American rule” against feeshifting—an exception, “inherent” in the “power [of] the courts” that applies for “ ‘willful disobedience of a court order’ ” or “when the losing party has ‘acted in bad faith, vexatiously, wantonly, or for oppressive reasons . . . .’ ” Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U. S. 240, 258–259 (1975). We have twice declined to construe fee-shifting provisions narrowly on the basis that doing so would render them superfluous, given the background exception to the American rule, see Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U. S. 412, 419 (1978); Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises, Inc., 390 U. S. 400, 402, n. 4 (1968) (per curiam), and we again decline to do so here.