US Federal Circuit sides with Douglas Dynamics not Buyers Products Last week Douglas Dynamics won a major patent infringement case against Buyers Products regarding their eerily similar snowplow designs. A Federal Circuit court consisting of three judges overruled the lower district court’s decision and ordered the court to grant a permanent injunction it had previously denied. This decision is long awaited and should galvanize Douglas, which currently commands approximately 60% of the snowplow market share, opposed to Buyers 5%, and recently purchased Trynex for $26 million. Previously, the district court concluded that Douglas has failed to make even a threshold showing of irreparable harm and although the parties here compete for sales of snowplow truck assemblies, along with a number of other manufacturers, Douglas suffered no injury because Douglas failed to show it was losing sales or market share to Buyers. The district court stated that persons willing to pay for a Douglas snowplow were unlikely to purchase a Buyers snowplow as a substitute, and that Douglas’s market share actually increased about 1% a year after Buyers introduced its infringing snowplows. The court even compared Douglas’s snowplow to a Mercedes Benz S550 and Buyers’ snowplow to a Ford Taurus, which has to sting a little if you’re a Buyers engineer. In this new ruling, the Federal Court found that because Douglas dedicates significant amounts of time and money towards marketing and sales, engineering, and research and development it has earned itself a reputation in the marketplace as an innovator and trusted supplier of quality snowplows. They went on to say that, where two companies are in competition against one another, the patentee suffers the harm & often irreparable of being forced to compete against products that incorporate and infringe its own patented inventions." Central Parts is a major distributor of both Douglas and Buyers and will continue to carry Fisher, Western and Snowdogg plows respectively, and their replacement parts as well. Ironically, this case not only has major implications in the snowplow industry, it also sets precedence for a current patent case that Apple has pending against Samsung. Apple even included portions of the Douglas Dynamics v. Buyers Products ruling in their appeal filed with the Federal Circuit. � |