Freedman Seating Co. v. American Seating Co.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that to constitute infringement under the doctrine of equivalents, the accused product must contain each limitation of the claim or its equivalent
• holding that a limitation was vitiated in part because the structural difference in the accused device “is not a ‘subtle difference in degree,’ but rather ‘a clear, substantial difference or difference in kind’ ” (internal citation omitted)
• concluding that “an element of an accused prod- uct or process is not, as a matter of law, equivalent to a limitation of the claimed invention if such a finding would entirely vitiate the limitation”
• finding that a rotatably mounted support member on a stowable seat was not equivalent to a slidably mounted support member
• holding there is not equivalence as a matter of law “if such a finding would entirely vitiate the limitation”
• explaining that in order to prove infringement, a patent holder must show that the accused device contains each element, literally or by equivalence, of the asserted claim

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).