Payments for Utility Patent Infringement

Discusses the issue of what a patent owner gets if a court rules that someone else infringed the owner's patent. In particular, how do you determine the amount of money the infringer must pay to the patent owner? This question recently featured in a case involving Power Integrations and Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. Power Integrations owned two patents on a power supply controller chip used in power sources such as chargers for electronic devices. One patent covers switching regulators for the power supply controller chip. Prior-art switching regulators were inefficient during periods when the dc output required little power. During these low-power periods, prior-art switching regulators would skip on/off cycles to decrease the dc power provided; the power remained off during the skipped cycle. However, skipping cycles created a loud noise and delivered power in an intermittent fashion. © 2014 IEEE.