Research Of The Doctrine Of Equivalents In Patent Infringement

The Judgment of patent infringement is critically important in the patent infringement litigation,but the application of the Doctrine of Equivalents is very complicated in judging the patent infringement.The Doctrine of Equivalents has experienced a rapid development and has become the most important principle since the birth of this theory.The essence of the Doctrine of Equivalents is to protect the rights and interests of patent holders through these methods in modern society,which are preventing the infringer from applying the same elements or steps to replace the technical features and avoiding the same record of the technical characteristics with the literal patent claims,in order to achieve the purpose of evading liability for tort.United States Court of intent of this principle is,what the application of the Doctrine of Equivalents in the judgments of the patent infringement expanded is not the scope of the claims,but the scope of the patent protection for the patentee.The extensive application of the Doctrine of Equivalents provides an effective way to determine the scope of patent protection correctly and to balance the rights and the legitimate interests between the patentee and the third parties.Doctrine of Equivalents is enshrined into the provisions of the Patent Law in many of the countries around the world and this principle is also implied in the provisions of our law.But there are no direct and clear provisions about the definitions of this principle in the "Patent Law" or "The Implementation Details of Patent Law".This makes the trial judgments are hard to be in accordance with the provisions of unified standards.Since the Doctrine of Equivalents is so important in the patent infringement litigation,this article combined the theory with the specific cases about the Doctrine of Equivalents to determine the value of the principles and to determine the application of standards,and then, the article puts forward some suggestions on the development and application of the Doctrine of Equivalents.This article is entitled "Doctrine of Equivalents Research In Patent Infringement",and the article is divided into four parts.The first part is about the value analysis of the Doctrine of Equivalents.This part introduces the background of the principle,such as the concept and the value of this theory.This part proposes the meaning of Doctrine of Equivalents theory and reviews important role of this theory in the relevant law.The second part mainly introduces the object,the subject and the time point respectively to determine the evaluation criteria of the Doctrine of Equivalents in the patent infringement.In this part,the details about the standards of the technical characteristics are determined.The third part describes the applications and the limitations of the Doctrine of Equivalents in some conditions.The forth part proposes some points and recommendations about the Doctrine of Equivalents,such as some suggestions on the theories,the institutions and the staffs,based on the current legislation and judicial practice.