MANUALLY OPERATED MACHINE "NOT AN INFRINGEMENT"


In Agilent Technologies Deutschland GmbH v Waters Corp and another (spotted by LexisNexis' subscription-only All England Direct service) [2004] EWHC 2992 (Ch) Mr Justice Pumfrey, sitting in the Patents Court, dismissed what looked like a pretty far-out patent infringement claim. Agilent owned a patent for to pumping apparatus for the delivery of liquid at high pressure which could be used in high pressure liquid chromatography columns. Following unreported proceedings in which the Court of Appeal ([2002] All ER (D) 152 (May)) held the patent valid and infringed, Agilent sued again, alleging that another Waters' pump system infringed. This machine operated in ‘manual mode’,the operator selecting pump volume from four pre-selectable volumes and separately specifying the flow rate of solvent delivered by the machine. This machine informed the operator if it could not deliver the specified flow rate at the volume specified but did not automatically change the range. Waters maintained that automatic operation was essential to the patent, while Agilent said the claim specified an apparatus which was capable of performing the required adjustment.



Agilent: are they trying to invent a machine for pumping out patent infringement claims?
Mr Justice Pumfrey dismissed the claim, holding that the patent was not infringed. On its true construction, the characterising portion of the patent could only be read as conferring a monopoly on apparatus capable of operating automatically in the manner described at length in the specification. The learned judge expressed the view that it was astonishing that a patent which was based upon a description which only contemplated automatic tracking of the desired flow rate should be capable of covering a device in which there was no such automatic tracking. The IPKat agrees with him. Whether you use the old Catnic/Improver test of non-exact infringement or the more sophisticated Kirin-Amgen approach, there's no scope for stretching this patent's claims to cover Waters' invention.

What is liquid chromatography? Click here to find out
MANUALLY OPERATED MACHINE "NOT AN INFRINGEMENT" MANUALLY OPERATED MACHINE "NOT AN INFRINGEMENT" Reviewed by Jeremy on Wednesday, December 22, 2004 Rating: 5

No comments:

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Powered by Blogger.