Introduction
The Federal Court of Appeal recently published its decision in
Tetra Tech EBA Inc. v. Georgetown Rail Equipment Company,
reversing the judgment of the court below to find the patent claims
at issue invalid for obviousness.
The appeal concerned the validity and potential infringement of
two patents, one for a railroad track inspection system and method
(the "082 patent") and the other for a method for
determining rail seat abrasion of a railroad track (the "249
patent").[1] Georgetown alleged that Tetra, a competitor
in the field of machine vision systems for railroad track
inspection, infringed the patents with its Three Dimensional Track
Assessment System ("3-D TAS"). Tetra denied infringement,
and counterclaimed for declarations that the claims of both patents
were invalid on the basis that they were obvious.
