Opinion ID: 697651
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the lost profits for the adl-100

Text: 214 I agree that lost profits on the lost sales of the MDL-55 and the ADL-100 are the proper measure of compensatory damages for Kelley's infringement of Rite-Hite's '847 patent. The considerations with respect to the ADL-100 are those of general damages: directness, foreseeability, duty. 215 Patent damages must be viewed with a practical eye in order to implement the policy of damages law. It is not the usual situation that an infringing device takes sales from a patentee's line of more than one product, not all of which were made under the patent that is infringed. However, this does not change the application of 35 U.S.C. Sec. 284. It may be simply differences in inventorship, or the timing of the discoveries, that places inventions in different patents of the same patent owner. Such a situation is not unusual. An example may be the case at bar, wherein Rite-Hite disclosed and claimed the infringed restraint in a later-filed patent having a different inventive entity than the patent on the ADL-100. Examples abound in the chemical field, where inventors may create related chemical compounds, obtain patents as the research progresses, and commercialize one of them. Should the infringer divert sales from another member of this series, according to Kelley, the only damages available would be a royalty at a sufficiently low rate to provide a profit to the infringer. The patent law is not prisoner of such irrational economics.