In THE FOREST GROUP, INC., v. BON TOOL COMPANY, et al., the Court of Appeals for The Federal Circuit ("CAFC") has held that under 35 USC §292, the fine for falsely marking an item as patented must be imposed on a per article basis, as opposed to a "per decision to mark" basis. The defendants had continued to mark its construction type stilts as patented with its US Patent No. 5,645,515, even after a district court had held that its own devices and the accused devices did not infringe its patent.
The district court only awarded $500 in damages and the CAFC has now remanded the case to the district court to determine the number of articles falsely marked by Forest after the district court's decision and the amount of penalty to be assessed per article. The fine is discretionary with the court so it does not necessarily need to assess a fine of the maximum of $500 per article. This could obviously be important in situations that involve a high volume of low cost products.
 | Senate Passes Historic Patent Reform Bill 0 Comments - 09 Mar 2011 The Senate yesterday passed the America Invents Act (S. 23) by a vote of 87-3.
Although some provisions were dropped, the Senate bill retained the following key elements:
Third party submissions of prior art for pending applications;
USPTO fee setting authority;
Supplemental examination authority;
Repeal of the residency requirement for Federal Ci... More Link |
 | Senate Defeats Feinstein Patent Amendment 0 Comments - 03 Mar 2011 An amendment that was offered by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to the patent reform bill (America Invents Act S. 23) has been tabled by a vote of 87 to 13.
The Feinstein Amendment removed the First To File provision in favor of the existing First to Invent System. Arguments against the First to File System include not allowing independent... More Link |
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment