Contrafação de patentes por equivalência no Brasil

Abstract

The present work refers to industrial property and addresses the application of the doctrine of equivalence in the determination of patent infringement. At first, a bibliographical research was done, both in national doctrine and in comparative law, on the applicable requirements, criteria and tests, as well as the limits to this application, followed by a research of jurisprudence in the Court of Justice of Rio Grande do Sul, which aimed to determine how equivalence is being applied in the judiciary. The result found was a lack of uniformity in the decisions as well a lack of well-defined criteria to determining the equivalence between the elements claimed in the patent and the counterfeit elements. Comparing the results of these two researches, the doctrinal criteria raised and those that are effectively used in the practice are confronted, in order to suggest a guide to good practices, which is expected to contribute to the improvement of the application of the doctrine of equivalence in judicial cases.