In Apple v. Samsung, 678 F.3d. 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2012), the Federal Circuit announced a "nexus" requirement for determining whether a patent owner has suffered irreparable harm of lost market share as a result of infringement. This new hurdle to injunctive relief, which is borrowed from analogous damages law, will likely prove exceedingly difficult to satisfy where a patented feature is only a portion of a larger accused product.
In the past, when a patent owner proved infringement, it was effectively presumed that the harm to the patentee was irreparable and that the infringing conduct should be enjoined. This practice was viewed as appropriate because a patent provides only the right to "exclude others" from making, using, selling, offering to sell or importing the patented invention — essentially, the right to protect one’s market share. The Supreme Court put a stop to this practice in eBay v. MercExchange, where it held that "the decision whether to grant or deny injunctive relief … must be exercised consistent with traditional principles of equity," which includes consideration of whether the plaintiff "has suffered an irreparable injury" and whether "remedies at law are inadequate to compensate for that injury."
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