Knowledge of a patent (or having reason to know of it) is a prerequisite for willful infringement; one way to establish that knowledge is, as you say, a notice letter, but that's far from the only way. In particular, engineers at a company reading a patent does establish knowledge of that patent. And of course knowledge is not the only prerequisite for willfulness. But sometimes it's the only thing saving you.
You imply that the plaintiff's damages expert decides whether to request enhanced damages, but in fact the enhanced-damage multiplier is a decision made by the district court after the damages have been decided.
Since you're evidently not familiar with the sordid history of the standards the courts apply to establish willful patent infringement, I suggest reading Underwater Devices v. Morrison-Knudsen, 717 F. 2d 1380, 1389-90 (Fed Cir. 01983), which imposed an egregious affirmative duty to consult counsel to avoid findings of willfulness; Kloster Speedsteel v. Crucible, 793 F. 2d 1565, 1579-80 (Fed. Cir. 01986), which strengthened it; Johns Hopkins v. CellPro, 152 F. 3d 1342, 1354, 1363-4 (Fed. Cir. 01998); Knorr-Bremse v. Dana, 383 F. 3d 1337, 1343 (Fed. Cir. 02004); In re Seagate, 497 F. 3d 1360, 1371 (Fed. Cir. 02007), which, among other things, eliminated the duty to consult counsel, four years before the AIA codified that elimination in §284; SSL v. Citrix 769 F. 3d 1073, 1082 (Fed. Cir. 02014); MobileMedia v. Apple, 780 F. 3d 1159, 1164 (Fed. Cir. 02015); and most of all Halo v. Pulse, 136 S. Ct. 1923 (02016), which substantially loosened the standard for willfulness again.
I can particularly recommend Ending Patent Law's Willfulness Game by Lemley and Tangri from 02003 for an overview of the legal landscape at the time: https://btlj.org/data/articles2015/vol18/18_4/18-berkeley-te... It's worth mentioning that Lemley and Tangri weren't just "in Google Patent Litigation"; they are actual patent litigators, partners in a patent law firm, and law professors (Lemley at Berkeley and then Stanford, Tangri at Berkeley). Tangri has actually represented Google, and Lemley is the author of a book on intellectual property. They say:
> The complex rules of the game... discourage engineers and companies from reading patents in the first place, thereby undermining the disclosure function that is at the foundation of the patent system. ... Defendants may become aware of a patent in several ways. ... A corporation can find a relevant patent during a patentability search for a new invention; or if one of its engineers regularly reads new patents in her field, observes a patent number marked on a competitor’s product, or even peruses a news article. ... Finally, a patent owner can put a competitor on notice of the existence of a patent by sending the competitor a letter identifying the patent and giving some indication of how it relates to the competitor’s business.
Fortunately, as I explained above, the situation has improved somewhat since their writing, but not in ways relevant to this discussion.
But it's true that establishing willfulness is not just a matter of finding a line in your HTTP server logs, and to my knowledge such a thing hasn't been offered as evidence in a patent case yet.
Your other points are irrelevant to my comment, since it did not allege that there was a delay, that there were nuggets of valuable IP to be mined, or that ideas mattered. As it happens, my opinions differ from yours in many ways, but I would rather not get sidetracked by irrelevancies.
I want to emphasize that I am not an expert in the field of patent litigation, but such expertise is not required to discover the flagrant and reckless falsehoods in your comment.