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Toyota Loses Hybrid Patent Infringement Appeal

The US Supreme Court let stand a $4.3 million award against Toyota Motor Corp. for using another company's patented technology in gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles, including the top-selling Prius, Bloomberg News reported today.

The justices, without comment, today turned away an appeal by Toyota, leaving intact a jury verdict favoring closely held Paice LLC of McLean, Virginia. A federal appeals court in Washington upheld the award last year.

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Toyota Loses Hybrid Patent Infringement Appeal



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MichaelTaylorMichaelTaylor - 5/12/2008 1:48:45 PM
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This is bullsh*t. Toyota deserves to win this but as usual some hater up high found a way to make Toyota loose.

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theoptimisticpessimisttheoptimisticpessimist - 5/12/2008 2:16:15 PM
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The Supreme Court is a Toyota haters?


Batman219Batman219 - 5/12/2008 2:19:04 PM
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Toyota doesn't deserve to win anything. The whole point of a patent is to restrict others from using your invention. Toyota infringed on the patent and they got slammed. They should've just licensed the technology in the first place.


eric113eric113 - 5/12/2008 8:03:39 PM
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Obviously, the PAICE LLC (who is suing toyo) is a patent troll set up by bunch of lawyers.
basically a paper company.

They don't make anything, but just patents to sue the company when they could.
Check their website too.


Agent63Agent63 - 5/14/2008 2:45:59 AMView My AgentSpace
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Lol. Don't forget that Honda was the first to implicate the Hybrid Technology in their cars. So if Toyota owns the hybrid patent then how come Honda came out with it first? : )

Toyota should just accept that fact and continue on.


EL34EL34 - 5/12/2008 2:07:52 PM
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Toyota, stop your whining !

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mercuryguymercuryguy - 5/12/2008 2:56:10 PM
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Ships and Train locomotives have been using diesel-electric for almost a century now.

Heck, the Germans used Diesel Electric in their U-boats in WWII. It was so efficient, they could cross the Atlantic on one Tank of Diesel Fuel. This is not a new invention.

It is just re-engineering a old idea already being used. The only thing that is new, is that they put it in an automobile, which is note worthy of thinking outside the box.

Gasoline-Electric, Diesel-Electric, the only difference is internal combustion engine charging the batteries.

I agree though, judges can and are bought by the powerful industries.


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BillBill - 5/12/2008 3:21:54 PM
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Submarines during World War II only used their electric motors when submerged.

There were few German submarines with the range to reach the US and this was only achieved through economical surface cruising.


truckmentruckmen - 5/12/2008 3:24:41 PM
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I am happy to see that the little guy can still win against a big company! Look at how long Toyota was getting away with it. This guy is going to be loaded.

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800over800over - 5/12/2008 4:47:37 PM
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Judging by the boosting we have a bunch of members well versed in patent law.

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NItePhireNItePhire - 5/12/2008 5:00:15 PM
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So does this mean that Ford has to pay too, since they basically bought Toyota's tech.

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mplsmpls - 5/12/2008 5:41:37 PM
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The case sounds very iffy to me.. the dispute is concerns the microprocessor that accepts torque information from the combustion engine and the electric motor.. Sounds pretty basic to me .. otherwise how to decide when the engine kicks in ?? To me it sounds like a patent troll who defined a patent so loosely and broad, and that it did not define a method completly, along comes Toyota who makes it's own chip for that purpose and wham.. gets sued for a patent infringement..

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SmarterThanYouSmarterThanYou - 5/12/2008 6:28:34 PM
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Agree with MPLS, just another example of how some jerk lawyers are using US legal system to steal money from the American public. Toyota will just raise the price on hybrids and the American consumers will ultimately foot the bill.


Batman219Batman219 - 5/12/2008 6:40:21 PM
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I'd have to look at the claims but as a general rule the USPTO is pretty anal about definiteness under 35 USC section 112 p2. There is no doubt in my mind that Toyota argued among other things indefiniteness of the claims in the patent. But the fact that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit rejected Toyota's appeal and affirmed the lower Court's decision signals to me that the claims were definite.


mplsmpls - 5/12/2008 7:12:22 PM
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hmm.. so what should Toyota ? remove the microprocessor from the system, put in a little man to decide when the engine kicks in, and when to charge tshe batteries ? what's not a got a microprocessor these days ?

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Batman219Batman219 - 5/12/2008 8:06:16 PM
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Sounds to me like its a utility patent that covers the actual microprocessor and whatever methods/processes the microprocessor uses to acquire and use the torque information for any given application or set of applications. I haven't seen the patent so I'm taking an educated guess from the blurb at the end of the article.

I'm surprised that Toyota didn't attempt to patent their invention prior to using it for sale. If they did the Paice patent would've turned up as prior art. I have a feeling that they knew about the Paice patent and rather than license the invention from Paice they took the risk of going forward and facing a patent infringement claim.

Its similar to recalls when the company calculates how much lawsuits and settlements would cost versus the cost of recalling and replacing the defective component in all the affected vehicles.


huu76huu76 - 5/12/2008 11:33:23 PM
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Does sound like a sham of a lawsuit, should Honda now sue everyone else who's marketed a "mild" hybrid? I think the courts decided on a draw to satisfy the little guy ($4.3 million is only a lot to the individual) and Toyota by allowing them to continue selling hybrids.

You can bet Toyota will appeal that royalty though.

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mplsmpls - 5/13/2008 12:21:20 PM
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Batman219..

you say that "USPTO is pretty anal about definiteness under 35 USC section 112 p2", bu have you heard of that very famous patent troll, he's dead btw now.. he was allowed to make changes to his patents over a number of years so that eventually it covered many things that he never even thought of.. but other companies did, and he sued them... The USPTO has allowed many dubious patents to be claimed..
How about dodgy claims by by some nuclear scientists in USA, but those very same things are very common knowledge in India.. What I am trying to say is that the USPTO is not infallible to agreeing to dogy claims of an invention..

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Batman219Batman219 - 5/13/2008 5:46:27 PM
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I never claimed the USPTO was infallible. I simply said that the requirements for definiteness in claims and anything related to patents are pretty stringent under US patent law. The amount of law pertaining to patents and their regulation is enormous. Out of about 500,000 patents filed last year approx. 150,000 got issued.

In theory patents are granted to new, never before created inventions. But this is supported in so far as evidence can be produced to the contrary within a given time period if applicable. So while the person in India may have knowledge of an invention, if its not patented/filed/published/etc. it can't be used to preclude an inventor in the US from patenting the invention. Capitalism isn't always fair.




mplsmpls - 5/15/2008 6:12:56 AM
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So the US company can go over to India and claim infringement ?? I don't think so !

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Batman219Batman219 - 5/15/2008 10:30:35 AM
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I'm not familiar with Indian patent law. But in the US, if someone claims infringement the alleged infringing party can antedate the accuser's patent in a number of ways depending on statutory bars, litigation strategy, etc. But the key is developing an invention. You can't patent an idea, so having knowledge of something is not enough. You must have a level of knowledge that allows you to enable the invention.

Your comments are of the "its not fair" vein as opposed to being based on knowledge of patent law so this can go on into perpetuity since everything I respond to will be met with a "its not fair" or derivative type response.

Since this has revealed itself to be a discussion on the effects of capitalism on patents and not on the specifics of patents themselves, I'm done here.


JTRacerJTRacer - 5/16/2008 1:57:01 AM
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All these Toyota bashing.. so what the heck exactly did this company Paise make??


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truckmentruckmen - 5/20/2008 5:13:27 AM
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Do you think this POS is green? Check out PML ! A Mini Cooper with 640HP with three times the gas mielage! Yes it's a Hybrid with 4 electric motors and a small generator to recharge the batteries and superconductors to store the brakes energy.

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