Estoppel

Equitable estoppel is a defense that may preclude the imposition of penalties, although it will not preclude injunctive relief Applying equitable estoppel, if a company has relied on advice from the EPA about how to comply with its 

National Association of Attorneys General and Department of Justice, Environment Natural Resources Division, Guidelines for Joint State/Federal Civil Environmental Enforcement Litigation (Mar. 2003), available at http //www.justice.gov/enrd/ENRDFiles/ Guidelines-for-joint-state-federal-civil-environmental-enforcement-litigation.pdf. 

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This rate does not include Federal Circuit overrules of summary judgement or collateral estoppel decisions. 

The basic effect of the doctrine of equivalents is to allow the patent owner to expand the scope of protection afforded by the literal language of the claims. However, the doctrine of equivalents does not allow the patent owner to expand the scope of the claims without restriction. The ability of the patent owner to expand the scope of the patent claims is restrained by the prior art and also by the doctrine of prosecution history estoppel. 

The doctrine of prosecution history estoppel also limits the degree to which the claims may be interpreted under the doctrine of equivalents. The doctrine of prosecution history estoppel precludes the patent owner from interpreting the claims in a manner that would encompass, within the claim, subject matter that the patent owner surrendered during prosecution of the patent application to achieve issuance of the patent. Any subject matter that the patent owner surrendered during prosecution to obtain allowance of claims made in the application of the patent cannot be reclaimed under the doctrine of equivalents. 

In Hardy v. Johns-Manville Sales Corp., 509 F.Supp 353(1981), the Eastern District of the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ruling on motions related to discovery and collateral estoppel, announces an intention to adopt some sort of Sindell liability. The court granted discovery motions targeting market share. 

The EPA maintains a TSCA hotline, which is currently staffed by a third party vendor. It is not likely that equitable estoppel would apply to advice from the hotline. If the vendor s employees send copies of EPA documents, then those documents could give rise to an equitable estoppel. 

Public policy exception Promissory estoppel exception... 

Additional guidelines, relating to the doctrine of equivalents and the rule of prosecution history estoppel, and based on the Supreme Court decisions in the cases of Festo Corporation v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Co., Ltd., 122 S.Ct. 1831 (2002) and Warner Jenkinson Company, Inc., v. Hilton Davis Chemical Co., 117 S.Ct. 1040 (1997), shed light on the limits and requirements of a finding of infringement under the doctrine of equivalents, as follows ... 

Prosecution history estoppel requires that claims of a patent be interpreted in hght of proceedings in patent office during the prosecution process,... 

Prosecution history estoppel may apply to any claim amendment made to satisfy a statutory requirement of the patent act,... 

A patentee alleging inflingement under the doctrine of equivalents can rebut the presumption that the prosecution history estoppel bars a finding of equivalence by showing that at the time of amendment one skilled in the art could not reasonably be expected to have drafted a claim that would have literally encompassed the alleged equivalent, and... 

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