DOCTRINE OF EQUIVALENTS

--By Advocate Ankita Sarangi--

There is a lot of grey area with respect to this specific Patents Law doctrine. As it is Patent claim infringement is a rare sight in India. But the Bombay High Court in the case of "Ravi Kamal Bali vs Kala Tech and Ors" had for the first time judicially recognized the presence of the Doctrine which was already well established in other countries. It is basically a legal rule that can hold the accused product accountable, infringing the claimant's rights using the route of direct infringement via doctrine of equivalents even though the infringing device or process does not fall within the literal scope of a patent claim i.e even if there is no literal infringement one can bring in an infringement suit.

The reason it evolved is because the exactitude of getting a precise element to show that it is infringed is not always possible. Therefore, to determine a patent infringement, it is to be considered whether a product is performing substantially the same function in the same way, yielding the same result .

Practically this is mostly used by the plaintiff's side as it gives them enough wiggle room to say that there isn't any substantial difference. This ushers a discussion on "the function way result test" which means they determine whether the accused product functions the same way as the claimed product, does it do it in the same way and does it have the same result.

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