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Text: Finally, we reject the Federal Circuit’s requirement that patent litigants establish their entitlement to fees under §285 by “clear and convincing evidence,” Brooks Furniture, 393 F. 3d, at 1382. We have not interpreted comparable fee-shifting statutes to require proof of entitlement to fees by clear and convincing evidence. See, e.g., Fogerty, 510 U. S., at 519; Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 496 U. S. 384 (1990); Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U. S. 552, 558 (1988). And nothing in §285 justifies such a high standard of proof. Section 285 demands a simple discretionary inquiry; it imposes no specific evidentiary burden, much less such a high one. Indeed, patent-infringement litigation has always been governed by a preponderance of the evidence standard, see, e.g., Béné v. Jeantet, 129 U. S. 683, 688 (1889), and that is the “standard generally applicable in civil actions,” because it “allows both parties to ‘share the risk of error in roughly equal fashion,’ ” Herman & MacLean v. Huddleston, 459 U. S. 375, 390 (1983).