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Patent Law Keyed to Adelman
Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., Ltd.
Facts
Plaintiff owns two patents for a magnetic rodless cylinder, a piston-driven device that uses magnets to move objects in a conveying system. In response to rejection, the prosecution history reveals that both patent applications were amended to reference prior art and new limitations. There were two new limitations: (1) the inventions are to contain a pair of sealing rings, each having a lip on one side, and (2) the outer shell of the device, the sleeve, is to be made of a magnetizable material. Defendant then brought a similar device to the market that had a single sealing ring with a two-way lip and a sleeve made of magnetizable alloy. Plaintiff sued for infringement claiming that although there was no literal infringement, Defendant's device infringed under the doctrine of equivalents because the devices were very similar. Defendant argued that Plaintiff was stopped from presenting this argument because of the prosecution history regarding the patents. The district court held that Plaintiff's amendments were not made to avoid prior art and did not result in estoppel. The court of appeals reversed and held that by narrowing a claim to secure a patent, the patentee surrenders all equivalents to the amended claim element. Prior decisions held that prosecution history estoppels made a flexible bar, foreclosing some, but not all, claims of equivalence, depending on the reason for the amendment and the changes in the text. Plaintiff appealed.
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