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Full-Text Articles in Law
Causal Responsibility And Patent Infringement, Dmitry Karshtedt
Causal Responsibility And Patent Infringement, Dmitry Karshtedt
Vanderbilt Law Review
It is not uncommon for multiple parties in the stream of commercemanufacturers, distributors, end users-to be involved in the infringement of a single patent. Yet courts continue to struggle with such scenarios. Attempts to deal with them-particularly when plaintiffs asserted so-called method patents, which cover specific "steps," or actions-have produced results that defy commonsense notions of legal responsibility. In method patent cases, the patentee must clear much higher legal hurdles to prevail against a manufacturer who designed and supplied an infringing device than against an end user who simply bought that device and operated it as intended. The manufacturer can …
The "Strict Liability" Of Direct Patent Infringement, Lynda J. Oswald
The "Strict Liability" Of Direct Patent Infringement, Lynda J. Oswald
Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law
In 1995, the Federal Circuit summarily attached the label of "strict liability" to direct patent infringement, even though that term does not appear in any US Patent Act enacted in the past two centuries. The catechism of "strict" direct patent infringement liability is now so well engrained in patent doctrine that it is easy to lose sight of how recent the advent of this terminology is in the case law, and how troublesome application of this standard has proven, even to the Federal Circuit, which created it. The first Patent Act (1790) preceded the emergence of tort law as a …