Talk About The Doctrine Of Estoppel In Judgment Of Patent Infringement

Along with the rapid development of Chinese scientific and technological level and country to intensify intellectual property rights protection, the protection of patent for the individual, especially to enterprise's development plays a special key role. The patentee always hope that own key technology will get maximum protection in law, in patent infringement litigation, the patentee general will argue equivalent infringement. As a product of the combination of law and technology, the patent system always seeks a balance between the patentee and the social public benefit. But to some extent, the prosecution history estoppel limits the above claims of the patentee. As an important principle in judging patent infringement, the prosecution history estoppel isn't specifically formulated in China's laws and judicial interpretations, but it has been acknowledged and applied in judicial practice in our country, and because of the uncertainty of applicable standards and situation, it brings a lot of inconvenience to the patent infringement judgement. In intellectual property rights cases annual report (2009) issued by the Supreme People's Court, according to the patent infringement of Shen Qiheng and Shenmao company, the Supreme People's Court considers that in determining whether constitute equivalent infringement, the people's court may limit necessarily the scope of equivalent by applying the prosecution history estoppel and reasonably determine the scope of protection of the patent right according to the fact that has been found, even the infringer does not claim application of the estoppel principle. By the case as the breakthrough point, this paper detailedly studies and discusses the prosecution history estoppel, and learns judicial practice from the American, in order to put forward several opinions to perfect our patent law system. The text is divided into six parts:The first part : This part in detail introduces the process of case,dispute focus and the decision of the court;The second part: This part is about concept and the historical development of the prosecution history estoppel. The section describes the estoppel principle of the Anglo-American law,Chinese contract law and the patent trial in our country, thus further studies the estoppel principle of the patent law. The third part: This part is the jurisprudence basis of the estoppel principle.The fourth part: This part introduces the function of the estoppel principle, through researching its relationship with equivalent principle, it is concluded that it's more important role is to explain the claim range.The fifth part: This part studies in detail the application,circumstances and the situation in our country of the estoppel principle.The sixth part: This part puts forward several opinions to perfect estoppel principle in our country through the above research and the reference of foreign advanced experience.