A Proposal to Restrict the Patent Law Doctrine of Equivalents While a Statutory Remedy Is Available
Year: 2004
Type: article
Abstract: The patent law doctrine of equivalents, a judicially created doctrine of relief, allows a plaintiff to succeed in a patent infringement action even though the accused infringer has not literally infringed the plaintiff’s patent. In such a case, the court will find infringement if the defendant’s potentially infringing subject matter is equivalent to what the patentee claims. The doctrine effectively allows the patentee to broaden the patent claim beyond its literal scope to include subject matter that performs “substantially the same function in substantially the same way to obtain the same result as the claimed subject matter.” This has the potential of broadening the patentee’s monopoly and the scope of protection beyond the initial intentions set forth in the patent application. There are dangers, however, associated with the doctrine of equivalents—most notably, the uncertainty that the doctrine creates. Generally speaking, courts should limit infringement to literal infringement when possible. Such a limitation is consistent with recent case law from the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has emphasized the need to narrow a
Author: Eric J. Faragi
Language: English
Topic: Intellectual Property Law
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1586175696