Court Opinion

ID: 6935063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-24 00:27:23.323892+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:07:24.960515
License: Public Domain

PAULINE NEWMAN, Circuit Judge,
with whom Circuit Judge RADER joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
The court today takes an important step toward preserving damages as an effective remedy for patent infringement. Patent infringement is a commercial tort, and the remedy should compensate for the actual financial injury that was caused by the tort. Thus I concur in the majority’s result with respect to entitlement to damages for lost sales of the ADL-100.
Yet the court draws a new bright line, adverse to patentees and the businesses built on patents, declining to make the injured claimants whole. The majority now restricts en banc the patentee’s previously existing, already limited right to prove damages for lost sales of collateral items — the so-called “convoyed” sales. Such remedy is now eliminated entirely unless the convoyed item is “functionally” inseparable from the patented item. The court thus propounds a legally ambivalent and economically unsound policy, authorizing damages for the lost sales of the ADL-100 but not those dock levelers that were required to be bid and sold as a package with the MDL-55 and the ADL-100.
The district court, in contrast, took a straightforward approach to the damages determination. The district court awarded compensatory damages for (1) Rite-Hite’s lost sales of the MDL-55 and the ADL-100 models of truck restraint, recognizing the commercial and competitive relationships of these models and the infringing device; (2) Rite-Hite’s lost sales of 1,692 dock levelers that were bid and sold in packages with the truck restraints, recognizing that the dock leveler business was a significant factor in Kelley’s infringing activity; and (3) the sales-level losses incurred by the independent sales organizations (the ISOs), recognizing their position as geographically exclusive selling arms of the patentee.
The majority affirms only the first of these three areas of pecuniary injury, reversing the district court’s damages award in the other two areas. I know of no law or policy served by eliminating recovery of actual damages when patents are involved. In holding that those injured by the infringement shall not be made whole, the value of the patent property is diminished. The majority’s half-a-loaf award, wherein the patentee and the other plaintiffs are denied recovery of a significant portion or all of their proven damages, is an important policy decision. Thus, although I join Parts A-I and B of the majority opinion, I must dissent from Parts A-II and A-III. With respect to Part A-IV, I agree that the district court’s determination of the royalty rate should not be disturbed, but I do not *1579share the majority’s view as to the royalty base.

I. THE LOST PROFITS FOR THE ADL-100

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.
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. § 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.

II. THE LOST CONVOYED SALES OF DOCK LEVELERS

A. Principles of Damages Law

The basic principle of damages law is that the injured party shall be made whole. On the facts on which the district court awarded damages for certain lost sales of dock levelers, the relationships were direct, causation was proved, the scope of recovery was narrow, and the circumstances were unusual. Reversing the district court, the majority holds that if the patented and convoyed items also have a separate market, there can never be recovery for the lost sales of the convoyed items. I do not believe that such a rule is necessary, or correct, in patent cases.
The majority adopts the rule for patent cases that lost “convoyed” sales can not be recompensed, whatever the directness of the injury and whatever the weight of the proof, unless the thing convoyed is a “functional” part of the thing patented. Heretofore, the question of recovery for lost sales of collateral items was a matter of fact and proof, the court looking at the closeness of the relationship between the items and the quality of the proof, cognizant of the policy of setting reasonable limits to liability.
The district court awarded damages only for those lost dock leveler sales that were bid and sold in a package with the truck restraint, and for which Rite-Hite proved it had competed with Kelley for the same customers, presenting transaction-by-transaction evidence. The district court’s finding that Rite-Hite would have sold an additional 1,692 dock levelers, in specifically proven restraint-leveler packages, is not disputed. It is not disputed that there was a direct, causal, foreseeable relationship between Kelley’s infringement and these lost sales. This court’s decision to withhold compensation for these specifically proven lost sales is a decision of policy, not law, for damages law supports compensation on these proofs. Refusing a remedy for proven injury caused by wrongdoing is an unusual judicial policy. It is not required by patent law, and it contravenes the rule that the injured party shall be made whole. Thus my colleagues carve a patent-based exception into the rule of general damages, refusing to award compensatory damages that have been proved.
The purpose of tort damages is to place the wronged party, as closely as possible, in the financial position that it would have occupied but for the wrong. The patent statute requires that damages for infringement shall be adequate to compensate for the losses caused by the infringement:
35 U.S.C. § 284. Damages
Upon finding for the claimant the court shall award the claimant damages ade*1580quate to compensate for the infringement, but in no event less than a reasonable royalty for the use made of the invention by the infringer, together with interests and costs as fixed by the court.
When 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.
The statute codifies the general rule of damages resulting from wrongful economic behavior:
And where a legal injury is of an economic character, “[t]he general rule is, that when a wrong has been done, and the law gives a remedy, the compensation shall be equal to the injury. The latter is the standard by which the former is to be measured. The injured party is to be placed, as near as may be, in the situation he would have occupied if the wrong had not been committed.”
Albemarle Paper Co. v. Moody, 422 U.S. 405, 418-19, 95 S.Ct. 2362, 2372, 45 L.Ed.2d 280 (1975) (quoting Wicker v. Hoppock, 73 U.S. (6 Wall.) 94, 99, 18 L.Ed. 752 (1867)). This rule is the “cardinal principle” of damages law:
The cardinal principle of damages in Anglo-American law is that of compensation for the injury caused to plaintiff by defendant’s breach of duty.
... The primary notion is that of repairing the plaintiffs injury or of making him whole as nearly as that may be done by an award of money. The “remedy [should] be commensurate to the injury sustained.”
4 Fowler V. Harper et al., The Law of Torts § 25.1, 490, 493 (2d ed. 1986) (quoting Rockwood v. Allen, 7 Mass. 254, 256 (1811) (Sedgwick, J.)) (alteration in the original, footnotes omitted). See also Charles T. McCormick, Handbook on the Law of Damages, § 44 (1985):
[The law] will only seek, as near as may be, by awarding money compensation, to place you in the same position as respects your pocketbook as you would have occupied if no wrong had taken place.
The threshold condition is embodied in 35 U.S.C. § 284 and its requirement that “the court shall award the claimant damages adequate to compensate.” The majority correctly applied this rule to Rite-Hite’s lost sales of the ADL-100 model of truck restraint, but inappropriately rejected the district court’s recognition of the lost sales of the dock levelers.
The district court recognized that the purpose of the award of damages for patent infringement is to compensate the claimant for the losses incurred. 35 U.S.C. § 284. This is a question of fact, reviewable for clear error. For convoyed sales there are issues of the directness of the injury and associated policy implications, but there is no prohibition in legal principle against recovery of the actual economic loss caused by the infringement. Indeed, this is the most fundamental of damages principles. See William M. Landes and Richard A. Posner, The Economic Structure of Tort Law (1987).
The Supreme Court has well stated the requirement that losses due to patent infringement shall be fully recompensed:
The question to be asked in determining damages is “how much had the Patent Holder and Licensee suffered by the infringement. And that question [is] primarily: had the Infringer not infringed, what would the Patent Holder-Licensee have made?”
Aro Manufacturing Co. v. Convertible Top Replacement Co., 377 U.S. 476, 507, 84 S.Ct. 1526, 1543, 12 L.Ed.2d 457, 141 USPQ 681, 694 (1964) (quoting Livesay Window Co. v. Livesay Industries, Inc., 251 F.2d 469, 471 (5th Cir.1958)). The Court recognized that damages in patent cases are general damages:
[T]he present statutory rule is that "only “damages” may be recovered. These have been defined by this Court as “compensation for the pecuniary loss he has suffered from the infringement, without regard to the question whether the defendant has gained or lost by his unlawful acts.” They have been said to constitute “the difference between his pecuniary condition after the *1581infringement, and what Ms condition would have been if the infringement had not occurred.”
Aro Manufacturing, 377 U.S. at 507, 84 S.Ct. at 1543, 141 USPQ at 694 (citations omitted).
The Federal Circuit heretofore conscientiously recognized that the rules of general damages applied to patent infringement cases. E.g., Lam, Inc. v. Johns-Manville Corp., 718 F.2d 1056, 1064, 219 USPQ 670, 674-75 (Fed.Cir.1983) (quoting Aro Manufacturing ):
[Damages adequate to compensate for the infringement constitute] “ ‘the difference between [the patent owner’s] pecumary condition after the infringement, and what his condition would have been if the infringement had not occurred.’ ”
Fromson v. Western Litho Plate & Supply Co., 853 F.2d 1568, 1574, 7 USPQ2d 1606, 1612 (Fed.Cir.1988):
The statute ... mandates that damages shall be “adequate to compensate” the patent owner for the infringement. That requirement parallels the criterion long applicable in other fields of law.
See also Paper Converting Machine Co. v. Magna-Graphics Corp., 745 F.2d 11, 21, 223 USPQ 591, 598 (Fed.Cir.1984); Weinar v. Rollform, Inc., 744 F.2d 797, 807, 223 USPQ 369, 375 (Fed.Cir.1984), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1084, 105 S.Ct. 1844, 85 L.Ed.2d 143 (1985); Del Mar Avionics, Inc. v. Quinton Instrument Co., 836 F.2d 1320, 1326, 5 USPQ2d 1255, 1260 (Fed.Cir.1987); Bio-Rad Labs., Inc. v. Nicolet Instrument Corp., 739 F.2d 604, 616, 222 USPQ 654, 663 (Fed.Cir.), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1038, 105 S.Ct. 516, 83 L.Ed.2d 405 (1984); Gyromat Corp. v. Champion Spark Plug Co., 735 F.2d 549, 553, 222 USPQ 4, 7 (Fed.Cir.1984).
A wrongdoer is, simply put, responsible for the direct, foreseeable consequences of the wrong. Indeed, in General Motors Corp. v. Devex Corp., 461 U.S. 648, 655, 103 S.Ct. 2058, 2062, 76 L.Ed.2d 211, 217 USPQ 1185, 1188 (1983), the Court referred to “Congress’ overriding purpose of affording patent owners complete compensation,” the Court observing that:
When Congress wished to limit an element of recovery in a patent infringement action, it said so explicitly.
461 U.S. at 653, 103 S.Ct. at 2061, 217 USPQ at 1187. Thus the Court reiterated that limitations to recovery for patent infringement are not to be inferred.

B. The “Package” Sales of Dock Levelers and Truck Restraints

The district court found that Kelley “developed its Truk Stop restraint both to capture part of the newly-developed restraint market and to avoid losing leveler sales.” Rite-Hite Corp. v. Kelley Co., 774 F.Supp. 1514, 1522, 21 USPQ2d 1801, 1806 (E.D.Wis.1991). The district court discussed customers’ requests for “package bids for the simultaneous installation of veMcle restraints and dock levelers, especially for new dock installations.” Id. at 1530, 21 USPQ2d at 1812. The court found that customers “almost invariably purchased both items from the same manufacturer.” Id. The court also referred to testimony that Kelley representatives told some customers that Kelley would void its warranties on its dock levelers if they were used with a Rite-Hite restraint, id., Kelley itself linking sale of the dock levelers to the infringing restraints.
The district court assessed the damages caused by Kelley’s infringement after meticulous review of an extensive body of evidence. The elements of causation and foreseeability, although fully satisfied on the evidence, are scarcely at issue. It is not disputed that these 1,692 dock levelers were sold, warranted, installed, and used together with the truck restraints. Kelley’s actual “package” sales of dock levelers and infringing restraints were the only convoyed sales for which compensation was awarded.
These dock leveler sales were as direct a target of the infringement as were the ADL-100 sales, and the quality of the proofs was equally high. The evidence shows the same transaction-by-transaction losses of sales to Kelley for the dock levelers as for the ADL-100 truck restraints, indeed in the same bid and sale packages. Precedent previously recognized that compensation may be appropriate when the items are sold together, *1582whether or not they also have separate markets. See TWM Mfg. Co. v. Dura Corp., 789 F.2d 895, 229 USPQ 525 (Fed.Cir.1986) (damages awarded for lost sales of unpatent-ed wheels and axles that were sold with patented suspension systems); Deere & Co. v. International Harvester Co., 710 F.2d 1551, 218 USPQ 481 (Fed.Cir.1983) (royalty damages assessed based on sales of unpat-ented combines and patented corn heads).
Recovery of damages for lost “convoyed” sales has always required a high standard of proof, lest remote and speculative claims be opportunistically pressed. However, it is not correct to hold that recovery is never possible unless the relationship of the patented and convoyed products is such that the only and necessary use is as a “single functioning unit.” Indeed, even the majority’s new requirement is met in this ease. These specific dock levelers were not sold separately because the customer or Kelley required that they be sold together; and it is undisputed that they are used together.
The correct question is not whether the infringing truck restraint was part of a larger combination whereby the truck restraint could not function without the dock leveler, or whether the truck restraint or the dock leveler also had an independent market and use. The correct rule was stated in Leesona Corp. v. United States, 599 F.2d 958, 974, 220 Ct.Cl. 234, 202 USPQ 424, 439, cert. denied, 444 U.S. 991, 100 S.Ct. 522, 62 L.Ed.2d 420 (1979), that
it is not the physical joinder or separation of the contested items that determines their inclusion in or exclusion from the compensation base, so much as their financial and marketing dependence on the patented item under standard marketing procedures for the goods in question.
The sales of dock levelers and truck restraints met this criterion.'
As the Court reiterated in Aro Manufacturing and in General Motors v. Devex, general damages in patent cases are whatever damages the plaintiff can prove. The history of the 1946 enactment reports this legislative purpose:
The object of the bill is to make the basis of recovery in patent infringement suits general damages, that is, any damages the complainant can prove, not less than a reasonable royalty, together with interest from the time the infringement occurred, rather than profits and damages.
Report of the Senate Subcommittee on Patents, S.Rep. No. 1503, 79th Cong., 2d Sess. 1, reprinted in 1946 U.S.Code Cong. Serv. 1386, 1387. The record shows that Kelley foresaw the potential loss of dock leveler sales, and that this contributed to Kelley’s infringement of Rite-Hite’s truck restraint patent. The record shows Kelley and Rite-Hite both bidding on the same restraint/leveler packages. The evidence established that Rite-Hite’s loss of 1,692 dock leveler sales was the direct, foreseeable, and indeed intended result of Kelley’s infringement.
Kelley bore the risk that if it was found to infringe Rite-Hite’s restraint patent, it would be liable for compensatory damages on the restraint/leveler packages. By eliminating recovery for this proven loss, this court makes a policy decision contrary to the principles of compensatory damages. Heretofore Federal Circuit precedent treated lost convoyed sales as a matter of fact and proof. I discern no clear error or discretionary abuse in the district court’s award of actual damages for these specific lost sales of restraint/leveler packages.

III. THE INJURY TO THE ISOs

Twenty-six of the plaintiffs are small businesses or individuals who were directly injured by the infringement. Some of these plaintiffs had previously brought a separate action against Kelley, the district court consolidating these actions. The district court’s award of damages to these plaintiffs has not been shown to be clearly erroneous, and I would affirm it.

A. The Position of the ISOs

Adam Smith observed that people work most effectively when they have a personal stake in the fruits of their labor. That is apparently how Rite-Hite structured its business. The ISOs were not “employees,” but independent entities. They were responsible for 70% of Rite-Hite’s sales. They *1583were not distributors, and most of them were not resellers. They were part of the make/ sell activity that was conducted before, not after, the first sale. The issue of their entitlement to the damages that they proved requires objective evaluation, not summary pigeonholing.
Indeed, the ISOs’ portion of the injury caused by the infringement is recoverable even on the majority’s view of the position of the ISOs in the “original ISO contract,” majority op. at 1552, which granted the ISOs the right “to solicit sales in the [exclusive] Territory.” The majority states that this commercial relationship was unchanged in any substantive way by the new agreement whereby Rite-Hite designated the ISOs as exclusive sales “licensees.” It is not necessary to decide the nuances of this contractual relationship, for the losses experienced at the sales level are compensable. If the ISOs were simply sales agents, as Kelley argues, then Rite-Hite is the seller of the goods. If these plaintiffs do not have “standing,” as the majority states, because the lost sales were made by Rite-Hite, not the ISOs, then Rite-Hite is entitled to these damages. Thus, if compensation is not owed to the ISOs, it is owed to Rite-Hite.
Witnesses at the damages trial explained that the profits from Rite-Hite’s manufacture and sale of truck restraints were calculated at both the manufacturing level and the sales level. Rite-Hite made about 30% of its sales through its own sales organizations, and 70% of its sales through the ISOs, which were assigned geographically exclusive territories. The district court awarded damages in accordance with which plaintiffs bore the losses, at the manufacturing and the sales levels. The majority apparently recognizes the recovery by Rite-Hite for the sales it made through its own selling arms, but not for those obtained by the ISOs.
The majority may have misunderstood the commercial structure, for it continues the loose reference to Rite-Hite’s manufacturing-level price as a “wholesale” price, although the lost sales to the customer — the price at which Kelley and Rite-Hite competed — was not at this manufacturing level of $1,000-1,500, but in the $2,500-3,000 range for the ADL-100. This price included both the manufacturing-level costs and profit and the sales-level costs and profit. Indeed, the district court drew this distinction, although not for the purpose of excluding recovery of sales-level losses, but for the purpose of distinguishing the profits lost at each level. Analyzing the evidence, the district court limited the recovery at the sales level to one third of that claimed, disallowing claims for individual salesmen’s commissions.
The trial court has substantial discretion in determining damages. In State Industries, Inc. v. Mor-Flo Industries, Inc., 883 F.2d 1573, 12 USPQ2d 1026 (Fed.Cir.1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1022, 110 S.Ct. 725, 107 L.Ed.2d 744 (1990), this court recognized that
the only limit on [the district court’s] discretion in selecting a remedy is that it be adequate to compensate for the damages suffered as a result of the infringement.
Id. at 1577, 12 USPQ2d at 1029. This deference that the judicial process accords to the trial court’s assessment of damages recognizes the fact-dependency of just compensation. In Perkins v. Standard Oil Co., 395 U.S. 642, 89 S.Ct. 1871, 23 L.Ed.2d 599 (1969), the Court looked at the chain of causation and observed that “Perkins was no mere innocent bystander; he was the principal victim of the price discrimination.” Id. at 649-50, 89 S.Ct. at 1874-75. So too were the ISOs a principal victim of the infringement, for they and Rite-Hite sold the goods whose sales were lost due to the infringement.

B. The ISOs as Sales Agents

The purpose of legal remedy is the recovery of damages by those injured by the tortious acts of another, provided of course that policy-based criteria are met. See, e.g., Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois, 431 U.S. 720, 97 S.Ct. 2061, 52 L.Ed.2d 707 (1977) (indirect purchasers generally do not have antitrust standing because of the risk of double recovery or the difficulty in apportioning damages). The ISOs and Rite-Hite are not subject to similar disabilities. Analogously to the Seventh Circuit’s explanation in Nelson v. Monroe Regional Medical Center, 925 F.2d 1555, 1563 (7th Cir.), cert. dismissed, *1584502 U.S. 903, 112 S.Ct. 285, 116 L.Ed.2d 286 (1991), that standing in antitrust cases follows the causation requirement of common law torts, standing in patent infringement cases follows the same extensive jurisprudence.
Kelley argued at trial, as it does here, that the ISOs can not recover damages because they were not exclusive patent licensees. The district court thoroughly explored the relationships between Rite-Hite and the ISOs. The ISOs were sales agents with certain exclusive rights and exclusive territories, with some exceptions for direct sales by Rite-Hite. Since they are not suing independently of the patentee, there is no relevance to those cases which hold that a nonexclusive licensee can not sue in its own name. When the patentee is joined as a party, as Rite-Hite is here, and the licensee has an exclusive right to make, use, or sell, the licensee has standing to recover for its own injury. In Western Elec. Co. v. Pacent Reproducer Corp., 42 F.2d 116, 119, 5 USPQ 105, 106 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 282 U.S. 873, 51 S.Ct. 78, 75 L.Ed. 771 (1930), the court explained that a less than fully exclusive licensee must join the patentee in any suit for infringement, while a fully exclusive licensee, like an assignee, can sue in its own name (citing Waterman v. Mackenzie, 138 U.S. 252, 256, 11 S.Ct. 334, 335, 34 L.Ed. 923 (1891)). In this case the patentee is a party to the suit, thus removing the risk of multiple suits, of which Kelley makes much. In Weinar v. Rollform, Inc., 744 F.2d 797, 807, 223 USPQ 369, 374-75 (Fed.Cir.1984) this court stated that “two parties sharing the property rights represented by a patent may have their respective property rights protected by injunction and each, when properly joined in a suit, may be entitled to damages.” In Innis, Speiden & Co. v. Food Machinery Corp., 2 F.R.D. 261, 265, 53 USPQ 330, 334 (D.Del.1942) the court explained that when a licensee is granted an exclusive right to some part of the patent grant, in that case the geographically exclusive right to sell the patented product in Florida, the licensee must be permitted to exclude others from trespassing upon his right, lest he “be in the position of one who has an exclusive easement across Blackacre but could not enjoin trespassers who persisted in impairing his easement.” Id. at 264 n. 2, 53 USPQ at 333 n. 2.
Thus if the ISOs are viewed as sales agents instead of licensees, either their sales exclusivity suffices to permit them to join with Rite-Hite in this suit, or Rite-Hite as principal can recover on their behalf.

C. General Damages Theory

The jurisprudence of tort damages illustrates myriad relationships between the wrongdoer and the injured party, from which there have evolved general criteria that apply damages law and policy. Precedent deals with the criteria of directness of the injury, foreseeability, and duty, derived from policy considerations whereby the public interest in remedying wrong is balanced with the public interest in placing reasonable limits on liability. Applying these rules, the ISOs were a direct and foreseeable victim of the infringement. Their recovery is not barred by statute or policy. Their entitlement is a question of fact and proof, applying the law and policy of damages.
Much of the evidence at trial, of head-to-head competitive bids against Kelley, was presented by the ISOs:
Each of plaintiffs’ claim files contains several documents pertaining to a single transaction or series of transactions with a single customer. The files include deposition testimony from a member of a Rite-Hite sales organization regarding a sale that Rite-Hite claims to have lost on account of an infringing Kelley sale. According to plaintiffs’ expert witness, accountant Ronald Beckman, every claim file regarding transactions in which plaintiffs seek lost profit damages contains testimony that: (1) prior to the Kelley sale, Rite-Hite salespersons had solicited the Kelley customer for Rite-Hite vehicle restraints, and (2) vehicle restraints from other manufacturers had not been bid or had been ruled out by the customer because of perceived product problems_ PDTX-143 specifically itemizes 169 cases in which plaintiffs’ salespersons testified that they *1585had initially convinced the customer to purchase a restraint before the customer ultimately purchased from Kelley.
Rite-Hite v. Kelley, 774 F.Supp. at 1525-26, 21 USPQ2d at 1809 (emphases added). The evidence was extensive and uneontradicted, that the injury to the ISO plaintiffs was directly and foreseeably caused by the infringement. The legal insulation of a wrongdoer from responsibility for its acts is rare in the law, requiring sound basis in public policy. In “The New Property,” 73 Yale L.J. 733 (1964), Professor Reich discusses the evolution of protection of property rights as characteristic of a just society.
The provision of adequate remedy for patent infringement is fundamental to a viable patent law. The district court’s damages rulings are not in clear error, and I would sustain them.