Comment by vel0city
9 days ago
I'm confused by the ending of this article. It seems like two mutually exclusive outcomes happened.
> The court held that the landing gear certified and sold by Bell Helicopter on its Model 429 helicopter, namely the Production Gear, does not infringe the Eurocopter patent. The court invalidated all but one claim of Eurocopter’s patent. Bell Helicopter is, therefore, free to continue all use and sales of its Model 429 helicopter with its existing landing gear.
So it doesn't infringe and they can continue to use the landing gear. But then
> In addition to awarding to Eurocopter damages and punitive damages, the judge also issued an injunction enjoining Bell from manufacturing, using, or selling the infringing landing gear, and also ordered Bell to destroy all infringing landing gears in its possession.
What? I'm clearly missing something here.
The first gear that Bell made was clearly a copy of Eurocopter's, though they claimed otherwise, and because of this they couldn't / didn't want to move on with certification and production. A lot of this can be considered as not being patent infrigement (development and experimentation, prior art claims...).
They slightly modified the gear on the production models. Eurocopter claimed the slightly modified gear is essentially the same (likely true) and thus still infringes on the patent (the court ruled otherwise).
The judge said the new modified gear is okay but ordered the old ones to be destroyed.
A Pyrrhic tactical victory for Eurocopter (kept their patent at great cost) and a strategic defeat (as Bell is essentially still selling their tech).