Re: [Patents] Suing uninformed customers

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> Still, even with the EP definition, the "industriality" requirement only
> affects the inventions themselves.  If Philipps buys special magnets which
> fall under GE's US patents from a company in Austria, where these patents
> do not exist, and then sells them in the US, why shouldn't Philipps be 
> liable?

Sorry for the jump in the logic here.  The example shouldn't have been 
about an industrial enterprise (Philipps).

Rather there are two separate issues:

1 The industriality requirement only affects the question whether 
  something is an invention.  It does not say anything about enforcement.

2 There are other provisions in patent law, in Europe mostly at national
  level, which regulate the limits of enforcement.  Some of these indeed
  show a thinking of limiting enforcement to the industrial sphere and
  e.g. exempting the private sphere or research.

3 Usually a sale of an industrial good implies that the patent rights
  are "exhausted" at this point and the seller is responsible in case
  of infringement by the customer.  Although in theory liabilities are
  pursued upward from the end-user, normally the end-user will be cleared
  by assumptions of "exhaustion" or default contract conditions, if not
  explicit contract conditions.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
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