Noninfringement

Noninfringement is a legal defense asserting that a party's actions do not violate a patent, copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property right. In patent law, noninfringement means that a product or process does not include all the elements or limitations of a patent's claims. This can occur if the accused product or process omits a claimed element, uses an equivalent that is not insubstantially different, or operates in a fundamentally different way. Similarly, in copyright law, noninfringement means that the allegedly infringing work does not copy protected expression from the original work. For trademarks, noninfringement means that the use of a mark is unlikely to cause confusion among consumers regarding the source of goods or services. A finding of noninfringement means that the defendant is not liable for the alleged intellectual property violation. It is a common defense raised in litigation and can be established through various forms of evidence and legal arguments.