Opinion ID: 336567
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Treble Damages for Infringement

Text: 193 Section 284 of Title 35, U.S.Code, provides that the court shall award damages to the claimant upon a finding for him, and further provides that 194 (w)hen the damages are not found by a jury, the court shall assess them. In either event the court may increase the damages up to three times the amount found or assessed. 195 Although a trial court has considerable discretion in assessing damages under this section, Maloney-Crawford Tank Corp. v. Sauder Tank Co., 10 Cir. 1975, 511 F.2d 10, 13, an appellate court can reverse the trebling of damages if an abuse of discretion is shown. White v. Mar-Bel, Inc., 5 Cir. 1975, 509 F.2d 287; Dixie Cup Co. v. Paper Container Mfg. Co., 7 Cir. 1948, 169 F.2d 645. Where the issue of patentability is close and litigated in good faith, the court should be more reluctant to impose punitive damages. See Wahl v. Carrier Mfg. Co., 7 Cir. 1975, 511 F.2d 209; Enterprise Mfg. Co. v. Shakespeare Co., 6 Cir. 1944, 141 F.2d 916. In this case, the jury was instructed that the seven patents now on appeal were valid and infringed. In response to a special interrogatory inquiring about the amount of damages for each patent found valid and infringed by either the court or the jury, the jury entered figures as to those seven, and in addition, as to Deep Conquest. It then found that the infringement was willful as to the seven valid and infringed patents. It left blank, however, the space wherein it was to indicate by what factor the damage figure should be multiplied. The district court then trebled the damage amounts found by the jury, from which action Cal-Florida appeals. 196 Cal-Florida's principal effort to avoid the district court's trebling of the damages rests on a recital of its conduct and on protestations of its good faith both before and after suit was filed. It correctly points out that this case presented difficult issues of first impression on the Plant Patent Act and that it therefore had a good faith belief that the patents were invalid. The parties had extensive negotiations concerning the patents prior to the filing of the suit. Finally, Cal-Florida asserts that it did discontinue handling patented varieties after suit was filed. 197 In light of the above factors, we believe the district court abused its discretion in trebling the damages here. The primary reason that impels us to reverse on this point is the novelty of the issues presented. Cal-Florida has argued its case against the validity of these patents forcefully, and it is no small task to decide how to fit plants into the niches normally used by mechanical, design, or process inventions. The jury's finding that the infringement was willful was advisory only. See White v. Mar-Bel, Inc., supra, 509 F.2d at 292. Although we have affirmed the district court's findings of validity and infringement, we direct that only actual damages should be awarded to Yoder, the successful claimant. 198 The subleties of the chrysanthemum business have given rise to a welter of legal issues in this case, both patent and antitrust. To summarize our holdings on the patent claims briefly, we have agreed with the lower court that evidence of sport recurrence is irrelevant to the patentability of plants, and that insufficient evidence was introduced to rebut the statutory presumption of patent validity. We have thus affirmed the court's holding that the seven plant patents were valid and infringed. Finally, we have held that the novelty and difficulty of the plant patent issues in this case rendered the lower court's trebling of the jury's award an abuse of discretion.