The judge decided he had infringed on her patent however the
patent by unintentionally using the same product process but found
her patent to be invalid because it was not novel (new) or non-
obvious, meaning “the invention must not be one that a person of
ordinary skill in the trade could have easily discovered” (Kubasek et
al., 2019). Since patent law requires a patent to be patentable, novel,
useful, and nonobvious, and the plaintiff’s design failed to meet two
of the four criteria, I think the judge got it right. Before hearing the
verdict, my initial reaction was that they were both just trying to
provide great customer service and took reasonable measures, that
most people in their industry would take, to give that good service.
Reference
Kubasek, N., Browne, N. M., Herron, D., Dhooge, L., & Barkacs, L.
(2019). Dynamic Business Law (5th ed.). McGraw Hill.
