Caterpillar Loses Appeal of ITC Fight Over Construction Patents

Caterpillar Inc.‘s challenge to a U.S. trade agency finding that it infringed two Wirtgen America Inc. patents on road paving equipment backfired when the Federal Circuit affirmed infringement of the two patents and revived a claim involving a third.

The International Trade Commission barred Caterpillar from importing road milling machines that infringed two Wirtgen patents, but rejected Wirtgen’s claims that Caterpillar induced others to infringe the third.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found no reversible error in the decision on the two patents but reversed and remanded the commission’s decision as to the third in ...