July 2026
The head-start question
Where a plaintiff’s expert once assumed a benefit running to the life of the product, the question now asked is how long it would have taken to develop the same thing independently. That is a factual question with a much shorter answer, and it is being put to the jury with an instruction that says so.
Practical effect
It moves value to the front of the case. An injunction obtained in the first sixty days is now worth considerably more than a damages theory developed in month eighteen, because the damages theory has a ceiling it did not used to have. For a claimant that argues for speed. For a defendant it argues for putting the independent-development evidence together early, while the engineers still remember.