The Patent Shoppe
  • Home
  • Firm Information
    • Areas of Practice
    • Firm Philosophy
    • Services and Pricing
  • Personnel
    • Patrick J. Lavender
  • Insight
  • Links
  • Contact Us

Why might an "inequitable conduct" defense to patent infringement be a more attractive defense than an "invalidity" defense?

1/11/2017

 
If a single claim of a patent is found to be invalid, the remaining claims of the patent can still survive if they do not suffer the same defect.  See 35 U.S.C. 288.  By stark contrast, if inequitable conduct is proven, the entire patent will be held unenforceable. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Rone-Poulenc Rorer, Inc., 326 F.3d 1226, 1233 (Fed. Cir. 2003).  Note that my question may make it seem like the defendant must choose a single defensive theory to run with at trial. In actual practice, however, defendants frequently raise both invalidity and inequitable conduct defenses (and sometimes even other defenses as well). 

Comments are closed.

    Insight
    ( Official Blog )

    RSS Feed

© COPYRIGHT 2015, THE PATENT SHOPPE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS WEBSITE IS PUBLISHED BY THE LAW FIRM THE PATENT SHOPPE. ITS CONTENTS ARE NOT INTENDED TO SERVE AS LEGAL ADVICE OR LEGAL OPINION. SUCH ADVICE MAY ONLY BE PROVIDED WHEN RELATED TO SPECIFIC FACT SITUATIONS THAT THE PATENT SHOPPE HAS BEEN RETAINED AS COUNSEL TO ADDRESS.