Craig M. Scott and Laurel Gilbert Rogowski, partners in the Intellectual Property Group, recently spoke with Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly about the impact of the decision in the Inline Plastics Corp. v. Lacerta Group, Inc., in which they represented the defendants in a full invalidation of a whole family of patents due to inequitable conduct by Inline.
While inequitable conduct is frequently asserted as an affirmative defense in patent cases, Craig M. Scott explains.
“Less frequently, they make it to trial,” he adds. “And [it is] even less frequent that there is a finding of inequitable conduct because the burden of proof — clear and convincing evidence of intent to deceive the Patent Office — is a high bar.”
Yet Scott, a partner in the Providence office of Hinckley, Allen & Snyder, and his Boston-based colleague Laurel M. Rogowski cleared that bar by showing that Inline had failed to disclose to the PTO material information — the contribution of two outside inventors — and did so with the specific intent to deceive.
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