The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that cookware maker Pentalpha infringed on a deep fryer patent through “willful blindness” to it. 

In an 8 – 1 decision, the high court affirmed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s conclusion that Pentalpha violated the patent, but said the lower court applied the wrong standard. 

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito Jr. said the “deliberate indifference” standard  applied by the appeals court was not correct because so-called “induced infringement” under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b) requires knowledge that the induced acts constitute patent infringement. 

Justice Anthony Kennedy was the sole dissenter. 

He agreed with the knowledge requirement but said the court went too far in adopting the willful-blindness test, which is a criminal-law doctrine, in the patent arena. 

Jeremy Oczek,an intellectual property litigator with Boston-basedProskauer Rose, which is not involved in the case, said the Supreme Court’s decision gives more certainty regarding the standard for active inducement. 

“Before litigators were uncertain if there was a knowledge component to inducement,” he said.  “Knowing that there is a knowledge component is helpful.” 

The court established that willful blindness satisfies the knowledge component, Oczek said.   

Pentalpha, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based Global-Tech Appliances Inc., was accused of infringing U.S. Patent No. 4,995,312, owned by French appliance maker SEB S.A., for a type of deep fryer. 

Pentalpha says it developed its own deep fryer in 1997 after purchasing and studying various models on the market. 

The company obtained a written opinion from an attorney that its deep fryer did not infringe any U.S. patent, allegedly without telling the attorney that it had copied features of SEB's product.  The attorney's search had not revealed SEB's patent.  

Pentalpha sold its fryers to Sunbeam Corp. and other retailers.  According to Pentalpha, it did not know of the patent before SEB sued Sunbeam for infringement in April 1998. 

SEB then sued Pentalpha in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in August 1999 for direct infringement and for inducing infringement. 

Pentalpha argued that it could not be liable for actively inducing infringement under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b) until after April 9, 1998, because it had no knowledge of SEB's patent before that date. 

Section 271(b) establishes liability for “whoever actively induces infringement of a patent.” 

Inducement occurs when an infringer encourages infringement by another party, such as a manufacturer that makes the infringing product or a distributor that sells it. 

The District Court instructed the jury that it could find the company liable for inducing infringement if it concluded that Pentalpha “knew or should have known” that its actions would induce infringement. 

The jury returned a verdict for SEB, finding Pentalpha liable for willful infringement and for induced infringement. The District Court awarded SEB more than $4.8 million in damages and fees. 

On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed. 

It ruled that Pentalpha's “deliberate indifference” as to whether its product might infringe a patent satisfied the “state of mind” element for actively inducing infringement. 

But the Supreme Court said that deliberate indifference did not satisfy the knowledge required by Section 271(b). 

The high court acknowledged that there is some ambiguity in the statutory language, but concluded that induced infringement requires knowledge that the induced acts constitute infringement. 

Although it agreed with Pentalpha that the Federal Circuit applied the wrong standard, the Supreme Court said that the evidence was plainly sufficient to support a finding of Pentalpha’s knowledge under the doctrine of willful blindness.  

The high court said it saw no reason why the doctrine, which is commonly used in criminal cases, should not apply in civil lawsuits for induced patent infringement. 

A “willfully blind defendant is one who takes deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of wrongdoing and who can be said to have actually known the critical facts,” the court explained. 

By contrast, the deliberate indifference test does not require active efforts by an inducer to avoid knowing about the infringing nature of its activities. 

Global-Tech Appliances Inc. et al. v. SEB S.A., No. 10-6, 2011 WL 2119109 (U.S. May 31, 2011). 

(Reporting by Deborah Nathan, Westlaw Journal Intellectual Property)