Cox Communications filed suit in federal court in Delaware in 2012, seeking a declaration of noninfringement and invalidity of 12 of Sprint's patents.
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U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco federal court ruled Monday that "there exists substantial evidence supporting the jury's verdict of noninfringement," rejecting Finjan's argument to set aside the verdict as unsupported by the evidence and enter judgment of infringement.
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The panel affirmed the judgment of noninfringement, but on different grounds from the District Court. The Federal Circuit then agreed to rehear the case en banc.Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1310.
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Red Hat filed suit against SCO on August 4, 2003. Red Hat sued SCO for false advertising, deceptive trade practices and asked for a declaratory judgment of noninfringement of any of SCO's copyrights. This case has been stayed pending resolution of the IBM case.
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The District Court granted AWH's summary judgment motion for noninfringement because it read the term "baffles" in the claims to mean internal barriers angled at angles other than 90 degrees. AWH's panels had baffles angled at 90 degrees.Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1309-11. Phillips appealed to the Federal Circuit.
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" In the same opinion, the court said, "Not once has this court affirmed a decision finding noninfringement based on the reverse doctrine of equivalents."Id. Similarly, in Depuy Spine, Inc. v. Medtronic Sofamor Danek, Inc., the Federal Circuit said that ’the doctrine is rarely invoked and virtually never sustained."567 F.3d 1314, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2009).
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When a patentee establishes literal > infringement, the accused infringer may undertake the burden of going > forward to establish the fact of noninfringement under the reverse doctrine > of equivalents. If the accused infringer makes a prima facie case, the > patentee, who retains the burden of persuasion on infringement, must rebut > that prima facie case.713 F.3d at 1123-24. See also Del Mar Avionics, Inc.
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He charges the Federal Circuit with, upon its inception in 1982, beginning "the practice of reversing or vacating district court decisions finding noninfringement under the reverse doctrine of equivalents."Id. at 473. Ernst says the Federal Circuit is wrong in calling the reverse doctrine of equivalents an "anachronistic exception, long mentioned but rarely applied." He points to a regular line of cases since Boyden leading all the way up to and past the 1982 founding of the Federal Circuit.
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The District Court recognized that Mirowski was the defendant in the action, but it held that Mirowski, "[a]s the part[y] asserting infringement," bore the burden of proving infringement. After a bench trial, the court found that Mirowski had not proved infringement, either directly or under the doctrine of equivalents, and it therefore lost. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit held that "when an infringement counterclaim by a patentee is foreclosed by the continued existence of a license, a licensee seeking a declaratory judgment of noninfringement and of no consequent liability under the license bears the burden of persuasion." Therefore, Medtronic, as plaintiff, bore the burden of proof, and the District Court ruling was vacated and remanded.
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At the district court, the jury found Ecolab infringed claims 1, 5, 6 and 7 of FMC's '676 patent, all of which included the following: > A method for sanitizing fowl that has been killed, plucked and eviscerated, > comprising contacting the fowl with an aqueous solution, which consists > essentially of a sanitizing concentration of at least a 100 ppm peracetic > acid... and maintaining that contact for a time sufficient to sanitize the > fowl without adversely affecting the fowl. Ecolab argued that it was entitled to JMOL of noninfringement for two reasons. First, Ecolab argued that when the '676 patent claims were properly construed in light of FMC's prosecution history disclaimer, Inspexx did not infringe because the patent claims cover only solutions containing peracetic acid as the sole antimicrobial agent. Second, Ecolab argued it did not infringe because Inspexx did not "sanitize" meat products under the patent's definition of that term.
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