 Patent Law Weblog By Kevin E. Noonan -- The doctrine of equivalents (DOE), a creation of the Supreme Court in Graver Tank & Mfg. v. Linde Air Products (1950), is balanced by the concept of prosecution history estoppel (PHE), the contours of which were delineated over an exhaustive (eight decisions over twelve years) back-and-forth between District Courts, the Federal Circuit, and the Supreme Court in Festo Corp. v. Shoketsu Kinzoku Kyogo Kabushiki. The resulting jurisprudence expanded the scope of PHE, wherein any claim amendment during patent prosecution presumptively raised the estoppel, which prevented any additional scope for the amended claim element. The effect... 
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