Foreseeability as a Bar to the Doctrine of Equivalents
Jeremy T. Marr Several opinions in these cases suggest that a patentee should not be able to invoke the doctrine of equivalents to obtain protection from equivalents that one skilled in the art would have reasonably foreseen before the patent issued. Federal Circuit Judge Rader, in particular, is a strong advocate of such a “foreseeability bar.” The United States and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) also advanced the idea in their amici briefs to the Supreme Court in Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyu Kabushiki Co., the Court’s latest case involving the issue. The Court’s opinion in...
Narrowing the Definition of an Interactive Service Provider Under § 230 of the Communications Decency Act
Miree Kim Congress enacted § 230 of the CDA in response to two cases in the 1990s that set forth contrasting standards for defamation liability in suits against ISPs related to users’ activity on the Internet. In 1991, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York concluded that CompuServe, an ISP, was not liable for defamation because it simply enabled users to access the Internet. In 1995, the New York Supreme Court held that Prodigy, which provided a service comparable to CompuServe’s, should be held liable for defamation. Section 230 reflects Congress’s concern that imposing liability...