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Brian Dodson of Dodson Consutants has written an interesting blog this week on the US Supreme Court judgement Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A. Readers can refer to his blog for the details of the case so I won't repeat them here, apart from a couple of key facts:
- A defendent in a patent infringement case asked their attorney for a freedom to operate study, but failed to tell the attorney that they had copied an existing product. Their attorney in turn failed to find a granted US patent protecting the existing product;
- The defendent then argued a lack of willful infringement because they were unaware of the granted US patent.
But I find the conclusions thought-provoking:
- Induced infringement under §271(b) (of the US Patent Act) requires knowledge that the induced acts constitute patent infringement;
- Having decided that actual knowledge is required, the Court then added that 'willful blindness' is legally equivalent to actual knowledge.
Willfull blindness, or deliberate indifference, is hence clearly not always a defence to willful infringement. In other words, ignorance is not neccessarily bliss....
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