Flawed Claim Mapping Can Lead To Lost Infringement Battle

In one of the longest patent infringement disputes, CS(OS) 635/2004, relating to Indian patent 175971 for 'Digital Transmission System, held by Koninklijke Philips NV, Philips sought a permanent injunction against BCI Optical Disc Ltd. The Delhi High Court invoked the doctrine of literal construction and the doctrine of equivalents and ruled that the plaintiff could not prove that its Video CD patent was violated. The Court held that Philips' comparison of its patented process with the defendants' product lacked essential elements of transmission, compression, and receiver mechanisms.

The Court observed that the plaintiff relied upon a technical affidavit of an expert to evidence the factum of infringement; however, the base of the report relied upon was defective and erroneous, as the whole process was based on the data copied from a VCD to a hard disc. The Court observed that to judge the technique of production on the basis of the selected data copied from the