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…)

New FTC Report Suggests Improved Alignment of Patent System With Competition Policy

Earlier this week, the FTC published an extensive report recommending ways to improve patent law policies.  The report emphasizes that the patent system and competition policy share the goal of promoting innovation that benefits consumers and explores ways to achieve greater alignment between the two.  Our friends at Foley & Lardner sent in this alert highlighting the key points of the report.

On March 7, 2011, the FTC released a 300-page report, The Evolving IP Marketplace: Aligning Patent Notice And Remedies With Competition. The Report assesses the patent system’s benefits and challenges as more companies shift to “open innovation” and increasingly rely on technology transfers to adopt inventions created outside their own R&D efforts. The FTC continues its engagement regarding the patent system that began with its 2003 Report, To Promote Innovation: The Proper Balance of Competition and Patent Law and Policy, and continued with its 2007 Report, Antitrust Enforcement and Intellectual Property Rights: Promoting Innovation and Competition. The 2011 Report aims to better align the patent laws with competition policy by recommending improvements to two areas of patent law policies, namely how well a patent gives notice to the public of what technology is protected, and the remedies available for patent infringement.

Improving The (more…)

A New Doctrine of Equivalents? CAFC Defines “Use” Under §271

Gene Quinn, of IPWatchdog and Practice Center Contributor, passed along this article on the recent Federal Circuit decision Centillion Data Systems, LLC v. Qwest Communications International, Inc..  In the article, Quinn discusses the opinion and questions whether it will “breathe new life into the doctrine of equivalents” given the Court’s determination of the meaning of “use” of a system as a matter of law under 35 U.S.C. 271 (a).

On January 20, 2011 the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion in Centillion Data Systems, LLC v. Qwest Communications International, Inc., in which the district court was affirmed in part and reversed in part. Of particular note here is the determination of the meaning of “use” as that term is used in 35 U.S.C. 271(a). The Federal Circuit, per Judge Moore (with Judges Lourie and Linn joining) acknowledged that the Court has never directly addressed the issue of infringement for “use” of a system claim that includes elements in the possession of more than one actor, thereby making the specific issue a question of first impression. (more…)

Claim To Standard: Simplifying Patent Infringement Analysis?

The following article was written by our friends at DLA Piper, Nicholas G. Papastavros and Melissa Reinckens.

In a recent opinion impacting a broad range of industries, the Federal Circuit addressed head on the role that standards play in patent infringement analysis. In Fujitsu Ltd. v. Netgear, Inc., the Federal Circuit held that “a district court may rely on an industry standard in analyzing infringement” instead of requiring proof of infringement for each individually accused device.

As quickly as the court established new precedent, however, it softened its impact, stating that “[o]nly in the situation where a patent covers every possible implementation of a standard will it be enough to prove infringement by showing standard compliance.”Id. at 9. So while the decision crystallizes the role standards play in assessing infringement, the Federal Circuit stopped short of a blockbuster ruling.

Three appellants – U.S. Philips Corporation, Fujitsu Limited and LG Electronics, Inc. – asserted claims against Netgear based on individual patents. Each patent at issue claims a different feature of wireless communications technologies. Id. at 3. Appellants alleged that Netgear infringed the patents by implementing wireless networking protocols for sending and receiving messages between a base station and a mobile station. The infringement allegations implicated two standards: the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 802.11 2007 Standard (802.11) and the Wi-Fi Alliance Wireless Multi-Media Specification, Version 1.1 (WMM). Id. The appellants were part of a licensing pool purporting to include patents that any manufacturer of 802.11 and WMM compliant products must license. Id. (more…)

US Supreme Court Accepts Microsoft Appeal in i4i Case

The following was sent in by Gene Quinn, of IPWatchdog and Practice Center Contributor.

Yesterday, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari in Microsoft Corporation v. i4i Limited Partnership, with Chief Justice John Roberts taking no part in the decision or petition. The Supreme Court did not request the views of the Solicitor General, choosing rather to accept the matter with no input from the United States government.  The decision to grant cert. comes only days after the United States Patent and Trademark Office refused to grant reexamination of the patent in question.

Microsoft had filed an ex parte reexamination request on the patent in question, US Patent No. 5,787,449. The ‘449 patent exited reexamination unchanged. Microsoft then filed a second ex parte reexamination request, and it is this second request that was denied by the Patent Office on Wednesday, November 24, 2010. The denial of this second request means that the Patent Office did not believe there to be a substantial new question of patentability. (more…)