Doctrine of equivalents (DOE) can be applied as a mechanism to hold a party liable for patent infringement even if the product or process does not literally infringe a patent claim, if the difference is “insubstantial”. Warner-Jenkinson Co. v. Hilton Davis Chem. Co. (1997) Findings of infringement under DOE, particularly in biotechnology related cases, have often been considered an exception rather than the rule. One such exception is the recent Federal Circuit nonprecedential decision in Jennewein Biotechnologie GmbH v. International Trade Commission, September 17, 2020, Chen, R. (Glycosyn LLC, the patent owner, joined as an Intervenor). The Federal Circuit affirmed an exclusion order from the International Trade Commission (ITC) relying on an application of DOE to find infringement supported by substantial evidence.
Continue Reading A Reminder of Doctrine of Equivalents in Biotechnology: Jennewein Biotechnologie GmbH v. International Trade Commission

Tamaria Dewdney
Tamaria is an associate in the Litigation Department, and a member of the Life Sciences Patent practice. Her primary area of focus is in the area of intellectual property, where she works with life sciences clients of all sizes in the preparation and prosecution of patent applications.
Prior to joining Proskauer, Tamaria was a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Medical School/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she characterized cellular and viral determinants that dictate HIV-1 nuclear import and integration using biophysical, biochemical, virology and structural biology techniques.
While studying for her Ph.D. at Wayne State University, she defined atomic resolution structural features in clinical drug targets using X-ray crystallography and computational molecular modeling, and applied structure-activity relationships (SAR) to design protease inhibitors that restore efficacy against multi-drug resistant HIV-1 protease. As an undergraduate at Wayne State, Tamaria’s research helped to identify a link between the chaperone protein ATP12p and mitochondrial DNA stability by a detailed characterization of 24 novel yeast strains with genetic defects in ATP12 using biochemical and molecular biology methods.