Patent Law Practice Center

Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A.: Importing criminal law into patent infringement

Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision in the Global-Tech Appliances v. SEB S.A. case set a higher mental state required to show infringement by inducement.  Many in the patent community are contemplating what implications the decision will have on the area of intellectual property? To get you up to speed, Vanessa Perez-Ramos, associate at Birch, Stewart, Kolasch & Birch, sent in this article discussing the key points of the opinion.

Relying on the well-established criminal law doctrine of “willful blindness,” the Court in Global-Tech Appliances, Inc., et al. v. SEB S.A., 563 U.S. _____ (2011), affirmed CAFC’s ruling that Global-Tech was liable for induced patent infringement of SEB’s deep fryer patents under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b).

Pentalpha Enterprises, a Global-Tech subsidiary, purchased an SEB fryer in a foreign market (which fryer unsurprisingly lacked U.S. patent markings) and virtually copied all of the fryer’s features, with the exception of the fryer’s cosmetic elements. Pentalpha hired an attorney to conduct a right-to-use study, but did not inform the attorney that the fryer was a replica of an SEB’s fryer. The attorney failed to locate SEB’s patent, and issued an opinion that Pentalpha’s fryer did not infringe any of the patents found by him. Penthalpa sold the fryers to Sunbeam Products, Inc., and Sunbeam resold them in the U.S. under its own trademarks. After settling a lawsuit against Sunbeam for patent infringement, SEB sued Pentalpha for actively inducing Sunbeam (and others) to sell or offer to sell the fryers at issue in contravention of § 271(b). (more…)