The federal government is quietly reshaping the remedies landscape for patent owners, and the latest move is a big one for non-practicing entities (“NPEs”)—patent owners that do not manufacture or sell products themselves but instead focus on licensing and enforcement.
On February 27, the DOJ and USPTO filed a joint Statement of Interest in Collision Communications Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. (E.D. Tex.), arguing that NPEs should not be categorically denied injunctive relief. The filing supports Collision’s pending permanent injunction motion following an October 2025 jury verdict awarding $445.5 million for willful infringement of four signal-processing patents covering wireless communications technology.
Samsung opposed the motion on familiar grounds: as an NPE, Collision could be made whole with royalties alone.
The government disagreed—pointedly. Grounded in the constitutional right to exclude (codified in 35 U.S.C. § 154) and the eBay four-factor test, its core arguments include:
- Categorical limits on injunctive relief for NPEs undermine the incentive to innovate
- Past damages and future royalties address different periods, making ongoing harm difficult to quantify with precision
- An appropriately scoped injunction leaves valuation to market forces, not courts
- NPEs can demonstrate irreparable harm and the inadequacy of monetary relief under the right circumstances
This is the third joint DOJ-USPTO Statement of Interest in under a year making the same core point: first at the ITC (advocating presumptive exclusion orders), then in Radian Memory Systems v. Samsung (E.D. Tex., June 24, 2025), and now here. Three interventions across three venues indicate a deliberate policy position being advanced by the government.
With AI-enabled patents proliferating—many held or monetized by NPEs in fast-evolving fields—these signals are especially timely. Access to injunctive relief can meaningfully strengthen enforcement leverage and licensing negotiations for startups, individual innovators, and companies across wireless, tech, life sciences, and AI when damages alone fall short.
For those advising NPE clients (or any patent owner) to skip the injunction motion because “courts won’t grant it post-eBay,” the assumption merits a second look.
Read more from Eileen M. via IPWatchdog, Inc: