Attorneys' fees for the winner [Patents]

In the United States, the normal rule is that each party to a lawsuit pays its own attorneys' fees. However, some statutes, including the Copyright Act, give the trial judge the authority to make the loser pay some or all of the winner's attorneys' fees when the loser, in one way or another, has acted badly. The question then becomes what constitutes sufficiently bad behavior so as to justify an award of attorneys' fees. That was the question before the court in the recent case of Asset Marketing Systems (AMS) v. Gagnon.