The Formstein Defence
Author Rklawton Licence CC BY-SA 4.0 Source Wikimedia Commons Jane Lambert Yesterday the Intellectual Property Office added a new para 125.17.8 on the Formstein defence to its Manual of Patent Practice . Considering that the defence is a doctrine of German law and that there has been no firm decision on whether that doctrine applies to this country, that is quite remarkable. Para 125.17.8 describes the doctrine as: "a principle developed under German patent law in relation to infringement and the doctrine of equivalents (DoE), whereby if an alleged infringer can show that an equivalent is a non-inventive variant of the claimed invention, then the patent’s scope for the purposes of determining any infringement is held to its normal construction – in other words the DoE does not apply." I have referred to the doctrine in Patents - Technetix BV and others v Teleste Ltd . on 19 Feb 2010 and Patents - Facebook Ireland Ltd v Vox...