The doctrine of equivalents is a legal rule in many of the world's patent systems that allows a court to hold a party liable for patent infringement even though the infringing device or process does not fall within the literal scope of a patent claim, but nevertheless is equivalent to the claimed invention. U.S. Judge Learned Hand has described its purpose as being "to temper unsparing logic and prevent an infringer from stealing the benefit of the invention".
The inventive step and non-obviousness reflect a general patentability requirement present in most patent laws, according to which an invention should be sufficiently inventive—i.e., non-obvious—in order to be patented. In other words, "[the] nonobviousness principle asks whether the invention is an adequate distance beyond or above the state of the art".
Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court clarified the nonobviousness requirement in United States patent law, set forth in 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Rowell v. Lindsay, 113 U.S. 97 (1885), was a bill brought by the appellants, John S. Rowell and Ira Rowell, the plaintiffs in the circuit court. The bill was in equity against Edmund J. Lindsay and William Lindsay, the appellees, to restrain the infringement of reissued letters patent No. 2,909, dated March 31, 1868, granted to the plaintiffs for 'a new and improved cultivator.
George Ludlum Hartford was the longtime Chairman and Treasurer of the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (A&P), serving in those positions for over 40 years from 1916 until his death. He was the successor to his father, George Huntington Hartford (1832–1917) and lead the company with his younger brother, John Augustine Hartford (1872–1951). Under the terms of their father's will, the two brothers had total control of the company's voting stock as long as either was alive. "Mr. George" as he was known to distinguish him from his father, "Mr. Hartford", was considered the "financial genius" at the firm who balanced his brother, "Mr. John" who was the firm's "merchandising power". They built the chain into the world's largest retailer with annual sales of $4.5 billion in 1957 when George died. Time Magazine interviewed John and his brother George who were on their cover in November 1950. Wall Street Journal in an editorial on August 29, 2011 wrote "Together the brothers, neither of whom had finished high school, built what would be, for 40 years, the largest retail outlet in the world." The New York Times in an editorial on September 7, 2011 wrote that John and George Hartford "were among the 20th century’s most accomplished and visionary businessmen."
Hotchkiss v. Greenwood, 52 U.S. 248 (1850), was a United States Supreme Court decision credited with introducing into United States patent law the concept of non-obviousness as a patentability requirement, as well as stating the applicable legal standard for determining its presence or absence in a claimed invention.
Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc., 553 U.S. 617 (2008), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court reaffirmed the validity of the patent exhaustion doctrine, and in doing so made uncertain the continuing precedential value of a line of decisions in the Federal Circuit that had sought to limit Supreme Court exhaustion doctrine decisions to their facts and to require a so-called "rule of reason" analysis of all post-sale restrictions other than tie-ins and price fixes. In the course of restating the patent exhaustion doctrine, the Court held that the exhaustion doctrine is triggered by, among other things, an authorized sale of a component when the only reasonable and intended use of the component is to practice the patent and the component substantially embodies the patented invention by embodying its essential features. The Court also overturned, in passing, the part of decision below that held that the exhaustion doctrine was limited to product claims and did not apply to method claims.
Anderson's-Black Rock, Inc. v. Pavement Salvage Co., 396 U.S. 57 (1969), is a 1969 decision of the United States Supreme Court on the legal standard governing the obviousness of claimed inventions. It stands for the proposition that, when old elements are combined in a way such that they do not interact in a novel, unobvious way, then the resulting combination is obvious and therefore unpatentable.
The exhausted combination doctrine, also referred to as the doctrine of theLincoln Engineeringcase, is the doctrine of U.S. patent law that when an inventor invents a new, unobvious device and seeks to patent not merely the new device but also the combination of the new device with a known, conventional device with which the new device cooperates in the conventional and predictable way in which devices of those types have previously cooperated, the combination is unpatentable as an "exhausted combination" or "old combination". The doctrine is also termed the doctrine of the Lincoln Engineering case because the United States Supreme Court explained the doctrine in its decision in Lincoln Engineering Co. v. Stewart-Warner Corp.
Point of novelty is a term used in patent law to distinguish those elements or limitations in a patent claim that are conventional or known from those elements or limitations that are novel, i.e. not conventional or known. That part of the invention may also be termed its "point of departure from the prior art." The term is also applied to a patentability test--the point of novelty test--which determines patentability by considering the point(s) of novelty after dissecting out the conventional part.
In United States patent law, a machine is one of the four principal categories of things that may be patented. The other three are a process, an article of manufacture, and a composition of matter. In United States patent law, that same terminology has been in use since the first patent act in 1790.
United States v. Adams, 383 U.S. 39 (1966), is a United States Supreme Court decision in the area of patent law. This case was later cited in KSR v. Teleflex as an example of a case satisfying the requirement for non-obviousness of a combination of known elements. It also features one of the great stories of patent litigation lore, with Adams's attorney utilizing an innovative and unique method of non-oral advocacy at oral argument in front of the Supreme Court.
Sakraida v. Ag Pro Inc., 425 U.S. 273 (1976), was a unanimous 1976 Supreme Court decision holding a claimed invention obvious because it "simply arranges old elements with each performing the same function it had been known to perform, although perhaps producing a more striking result than in previous combinations."
For a patent to be valid in Canada, the invention claimed therein needs to be new and inventive. In patent law, these requirements are known as novelty and non-obviousness. A patent cannot in theory be granted for an invention without meeting these basic requirements or at least, if a patent which does not meet these requirements is granted, it cannot later be maintained. These requirements are borne out of a combination of statute and case law.
Carbice Corp. v. American Patents Development Corp., 283 U.S. 27 (1931), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court extending the patent misuse doctrine against tie-ins to cases in which patents were used to tie the purchase of unpatented elements of patented combinations. The Court had previously held that it was unlawful to require the purchase of supplies as a condition of a patent license, where the supplies were not claimed as part of the patented combination.
Atlantic Works v. Brady, 107 U.S. 192 (1883), is a patent infringement decision of the United States Supreme Court, noted for this criticism of allowing patents on trivial inventions that encourage speculators:
The design of the patent laws is to reward those who make some substantial discovery or invention which adds to our knowledge and makes a step in advance in the useful arts. Such inventors are worthy of all favor. It was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea. . . . Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts.
The Mercoid cases—Mercoid Corp. v. Mid-Continent Investment Co., 320 U.S. 661 (1944), and Mercoid Corp. v. Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co., 320 U.S. 680 (1944)—are 1944 patent tie-in misuse and antitrust decisions of the United States Supreme Court. These companion cases are said to have reached the "high-water mark of the patent misuse doctrine." The Court substantially limited the contributory infringement doctrine by holding unlawful tie-ins of "non-staple" unpatented articles that were specially adapted only for use in practicing a patent, and the Court observed: "The result of this decision, together with those which have preceded it, is to limit substantially the doctrine of contributory infringement. What residuum may be left we need not stop to consider." The Court also suggested that an attempt to extend the reach of a patent beyond its claims could or would violate the antitrust laws: "The legality of any attempt to bring unpatented goods within the protection of the patent is measured by the antitrust laws, not by the patent law."
The reverse doctrine of equivalents is a legal doctrine of United States patent law, according to which a device that appears to literally infringe a patent claim, by including elements or limitations that correspond to each element or limitation of the patent claim, nonetheless does not infringe the patent, because the accused device operates on a different principle. That is, "it performs the same or a similar function in a substantially different way." It has been said that "the purpose of the ‘reverse’ doctrine is to prevent unwarranted extension of the claims beyond a fair scope of the patentee’s invention."
