“Garbuio v. Comas”

With regard to patents for industrial inventions and the infringement by equivalence thereof within the meaning of Art. 52(3a) Industrial Property Code, as per Legislative Decree No. 30 of 2005, and as amended by Legislative Decree No. 131 of 13 August 2010, the court called upon to assess whether there has been an infringement must first determine the scope of protection conferred by the patent. It must then identify, through analysis, the individual features of the invention as expressly claimed in the patent specification, interpreted also on the basis of their description and the accompanying drawings. Thereafter, the court must ascertain whether each element so claimed is also found in the allegedly infringing product, even if only by equivalence, with this referring, according to one of the possible methodologies that can be used, to variants of the invention that can perform the same function as the elements of the patented product itself by following substantially the same path as the inventor and achieving the same outcome.