Client Alert: Supreme Court Opens the Door for the Recovery of Foreign Lost Profits for Patent Infringement Under 35 U.S.C. § 271(f)(2)

This Client Alert addresses the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp., which found that it was not an impermissible extraterritorial application of U.S. law to award damages in the form of lost profits from foreign sales in a case involving infringement under Section 271(f)(2). The decision narrowly addressed damages for infringement -- the exportation of components of a patented invention; however, patentees will likely use this argument as a springboard to seek broader damages for other forms of patent infringement. The overall impact of this decision remains to be seen, as the decision does not address the issue of proximate cause, which in many cases will be a significant hurdle to patentees seeking to recover lost foreign sales.

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