California Appellate Tracker

WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp.

June 27, 2018

A patentee may recover lost profits suffered in foreign countries as damages in a patent infringement action brought against a defendant that shipped parts from the United States for assembly into an infringing product in a foreign country.

At least when the patentee sues the defendant for shipping component parts of an invention from the United States to a foreign country with the intent that they are assembled there into an infringing product, the patentee may recover profits it lost in foreign countries due to the infringement. The focus of the statute that the infringer violated in this case 35 U.S.C. 271(f)(2) is on the domestic act of supplying the components of an invention from the United States. So the award of lost profits damages, even if those profits would have been earned abroad, is a domestic application of the statute, raising no extraterritoriality concerns.

United States Supreme Court (Thomas, J.; Gorsuch & Breyer, JJ., dissenting); June 22, 2018; 2018 U.S. LEXIS 3842

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WesternGeco LLC v. ION Geophysical Corp.

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