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Our Client, a local manufacturer of municipal machinery (Ryazan Region), was sued by a local patent owner (Moscow) seeking for an injunction, destroying of vehicles in dispute, and demanding monetary compensation for patent infringement in the amount equal to the full price of the vehicles sold out. The suit was based on the doctrine of equivalents since both parties agreed that there was no literal infringement of patent RU 2487070. An expert nominated by the court found equivalency; thus, declared that the patent was infringed. «A.Zalesov & Partners» provided a bulk of evidence to prove that the expert's conclusions were erroneous and contradicting to the facts of the case. A cross-examination of the expert revealed discrepancies in the expert's position. It was proven, that first, the expert erred in the function of the defendant's feature, which she considered equivalent to the patented one, and second, she erred in choosing the proper prior art to prove that the defendant's feature was known as equivalent before the patent priority date (the requirement of art. 1378 of the Civil Code is that that using an equivalent feature can be considered infringement if this feature is known as equivalent from prior art before the patent priority date). After more than one year consideration in the first instance, the Moscow City Arbitration Court ruled to reject the patent owner's claims in full. The decision was appealed by the patent owner, and a repeated expert opinion, nominated by the appeal court, confirmed, that there was no patent infringement. By its Ruling as of May 06, 2019, the 9th Appeal Arbitration Court upheld the decision of the first instance, that the claims should be dismissed due to non-infringement. The full court case file on the case A40-30260/2017 can be found here. The defendant was represented by «A.Zalesov & Partners» Patent & Law Firm team: Aleksey Zalesov, Managing Partner, Irina Ozolina, Senior Partner, and Vladislav Ryabov, Senior Associate.

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