Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Law
The Doctrine Of Equivalents In Various Patent Regimes: Does Anybody Have It Right?, Martin J. Adelman
The Doctrine Of Equivalents In Various Patent Regimes: Does Anybody Have It Right?, Martin J. Adelman
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
The doctrine of equivalents is arguably one of the most important aspects of patent law. The protection a patent confers is meaningless if its scope is determined to be so narrow that trivial changes to a device bring it out of the bounds of the patent. One of the greatest challenges courts and legislatures therefore face in patent law is to create rules for determining patent scope that maintain the protection a patent is meant to confer while still keeping the patent monopoly within reasonable bounds. Despite the general unity in patent laws among developed countries, the difficulty of this …