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Damages Surveys

Turn consumer perception insights into courtroom-ready evidence to support damages requests.

Providing expert surveys for damages apportionment and price premium calculation.

Damage assessments are an important part of an overall trial strategy, but they can also be challenging. When damage calculations rely on hard-to-access information about consumer preferences or behaviors, damages surveys are a valuable resource.

Our litigation survey experts design and conduct damages surveys in trademark, false advertising, patent, and class action disputes, based on sound social science and the facts specific to your case. IMS also offers non-survey economic analysis from in-house economic experts, as well as rebuttals of damages surveys.

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Supporting Damage Claims or Limiting Risk

We use surveys to measure how infringing marks, false advertising claims, infringing product features, and other disputed elements may influence consumer behavior, providing empirical support for damages calculations. Our survey experts apply several methodologies to do this, including:

  • Asking consumers how their behavior might have changed if they had certain information
  • Purchase importance surveys, which ask consumers to rate the importance of each product feature that influenced their purchases
  • Conjoint surveys, which present a series of choices between different hypothetical products and ask respondents which product they would buy. After consumers have made several such choices, an economic expert typically uses the data to determine what consumers are willing to pay for the at-issue product feature.

All our litigation surveys are expertly designed to identify the portion of a product’s profits that is attributable to a specific product feature, advertising claim, or other elements at issue, giving legal teams credible support for their damages arguments. We deliver defensible results that withstand expert scrutiny and judicial review.

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Measuring Reasonable Royalties

When patented products—and the reasons for purchasing them—are complex, it can be difficult to assess reasonable royalties. One method is to apportion the profits attributable to the alleged infringement.

Surveys that apportion damages can be helpful in this kind of patent infringement case. These surveys measure the importance of the at-issue product feature to consumers, which in turn provides a basis for calculating what part of the profits can be attributed to infringement (perhaps with the help of an economic expert).

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Calculating Price Premium

Damages in some lawsuits depend on the value of a claim, product feature, or protected intellectual property. Price premium surveys calculate that value, allowing your legal team to quantify the damages from the alleged misstatement or infringement and obtain a reliable basis for damages claims. These surveys can measure how important a specific claim, mark, or feature was to consumer purchase decisions, or how much consumers are willing to pay for a feature, relative to other elements of a product.

Price premium surveys may also be useful in class actions, helping to establish whether the proposed class members have enough in common to be certified. The price premium calculation data can also be used to determine damages.

Meet Our Damages Survey Experts

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Trust our team to deliver precise survey evidence and expert analysis that informs your IP litigation strategy.