Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A. (10-6)

argument 10-6

Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A.

Supreme Court of the United States 1h 0m 5 speakers 8 chapters transcribed 4 days ago official recording ↗

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What is the “purposeful culpable” test for inducing patent infringement?

John G. Roberts 0:02

You'll hear argument next this morning in case ten six, Global Tech Appliances versus SEBSA. Mr. Dunegan?

Unknown 0:10

Mr Chief Justice, and may it please the Court. The standard for the state of mind element for a claim for inducing patent infringement should be Did the accused inducer have a purpose? To induce a third party to engage in acts that the accused inducer knew infringed a patent. That's what I'll call the purposeful culpable test. The Federal Circuit applied a standard of whether Pentalfa was deliberately indifferent to a known risk that a patent may exist. The Federal Circuit's deliberate indifference test was not a willful blindness test. Willful blindness would have required both. an awareness of a high probability that a patent would exist and a deliberate effort to avoid learning the truth. That's okay as

Unknown 1:05

far as you're concerned. You you consider that comes within your your first desk? Um Your Honor, deliberate indifference would not fall, but willful blindness would. No, Your Honor, willful blindness would not fall within our purposeful culpable task. So even willful blindness wouldn't wouldn't be enough. Willful blindness is not a purpose, Your Honor. You say d the The particular patent, the defendant would have to know That And the device infringe the particular patent, I think that would be a standard it was im would be impossible to meet. And we'd have to know is it was patent number whatever it was, three twelve. Well, you wouldn't have to know the patent number, Your Honor, but what you would have to know is that your pr the product which you are inducing a third party to make use or sell would be within the scope of a per of the claims of a particular patent.

Unknown 2:01

If you don't know that, then you're literally But you can keep yourself ignorant of it. I mean for example You uh pointed out that the That the uh Device that was copied. was purchased in Hong Kong so it didn't have any marking. But The same Uh Pentalpa could have bought the the device in um Montgomery Ward, looked to see if it had a pattern marking. Didn't do that. It didn't do that, Your Honor. What it did was better. It hired a United States patent attorney to conduct a search to see if there was any patent which was infringed. But didn't tell that patent attorney. that they had reverse engineered a particular product. If the attorney had been told This device copied the SE Bryar. Isn't it ninety nine a hundred forty four one hundred percent sure

Unknown 3:05

That the attorney then would have found this patent? We don't know, Your Honor. We don't know why the patent search failed. It could have failed for a number of I didn't ask you about this patent search. I said If they had told The patent attorney. We have copied a particular prior. It's S E B's fire. Now find out if it infringed any patent. Do you think an attorney would not have found it? The SEB patent? It's possible that he wouldn't have. Maybe it's more probable that he would have. There's just no evidence on that in the record, your others.

Unknown 3:52

Why wouldn't you tell me? The reason we're concerned is that we have reverse engineered this from somebody else's product. Just check to see if S E V has a patent on any of this stuff that would be first engine. What I would have done. Your Honor, maybe that's what you have done. That's maybe that's what I would have done. But there's no but the standard of that business, what they had done in the past, was to give their design drawings to the patent attorney and say, objectively check these design drawings. Their practice was not to notify the Was their practice to reverse engineer from other people's products? Uh yeah. I can understand when you have a new product of your own, of course you just give it to an attorney.

Unknown 4:34

But where you have reverse engineered, not to tell 'em that it was reverse engineered, seems to me Really trying to keep yourself in the dark. Uh you what what you want to get from the attorney is a piece of paper that that he can show to Montgomery Ward. that uh yeah, this product is not and as it turns out, Montgomery Ward did accept it and