The scope of protection of a patent is fundamental to whether a patent is infringed.
In 2017 the U.K. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Actavis v Eli Lilly [2017], that fundamentally changed how U.K. patent infringement is assessed, by the (re-) introduction of a ‘doctrine of equivalents’, in which a feature that falls outside of a ‘normal’ interpretation of the claims but that nonetheless varies from the invention in a way that is ‘immaterial’, infringes a U.K. patent. This can provide a U.K. patent with a broader scope of protection than was the case prior to the Actavis decision.
Here we look at how the Actavis decision has been applied and developed in subsequent decisions by the U.K. courts.
