In the context of a reasonable royalty analysis for patent infringement damages, accused infringers often consider their next best alternative when evaluating the royalty they would be willing to pay for a hypothetical license to the asserted patent(s).
In this CRA Insights, the authors discuss recent rulings regarding which party bears the burden of proof related to non-infringing alternatives, when and by what means those alternatives need to be disclosed, and how those alternatives impact the reasonable royalty analysis.
Read more here.