Here's my question if Convolve and Seagate had a meeting, albeit with NDA firmly in place, and Seagate having gazed and used Convolve's technology to spring board there own is that an infringement? I mean if I came up with an idea based off of someone's else's work but went in a different direction, similar but different is it still an infringement?
There was a famous lawsuit in Detroit in 1990, a jury decided that Ford infringed on Kearns' patent, though it concluded the infringement was not deliberate. Ford had contended the patent was invalid because the windshield system contained no new concepts. But Kearns argued a new combination of parts made his invention unique.
I remember the rational he used about the combination of parts, he give several books to witness that tried to debunk the infringement claims as having no new concept, and asked the witness if the books he handed him were considered unique writings, and the witness said yes, he asked the witness to read certain words like, the, it, and, etc, and asked are these words considered new concepts, and the witness said no, and Kearns said but in there combination it makes the whole unique, which I thought was brilliant.
Could that be applied here?