Patent Claims Including Numerical Data - Scope of Protection and Doctrine of Equivalents

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Patent Claims Including Numerical Data - Scope of Protection and Doctrine of Equivalents

by Reinhardt Schuster and Clemens Rübel

I. Introduction

In a landmark decision (Chimney Pipe Case), rendered on March 22, 2001, the District Court Düsseldorf, statistically the most frequented first instance Court for patent infringement proceedings in Germany and even in Europe, had to decide on the scope of protection of a patent which limited its scope by numbers in its claims. Here, the Court had to balance important principles against each other when deciding whether the scope of protection also covers embodiments which lie outside of the range indicated by these numbers: The principle of rewarding the inventor with an adequate scope of protection versus certainty of the law in view of the specific claim language. This area of conflict regularly comes up with decisions in the field of the doctrine of equivalents....

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