Legal Issues Impact Plan

6.1 Patent Infringement
Answer those two questions:

1.  John and Andrew Doney invented a hard-bearing device for balancing rotors. Although they obtained a patent for their invention from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, it was never used as an automobile wheel balancer. Some time later, Exetron Corp. produced an auto- mobile wheel balancer that used a hard-bearing device similar to the Doneys device. Given that the Doneys had not used their device for automobile wheel balancing, does Exetrons use of a similar device infringe on the Doneys patent? (See Patents.)

2. Professor Wise is teaching a summer seminar in business torts at State University. Several times during the course, he makes copies of relevant sections from business law texts and distributes them to his students. Wise does not realize that the daughter of one of the textbook authors is a member of his seminar. She tells her father about Wises copy- ing activities, which have taken place without her fathers or his publishers permission. Her father sues Wise for copyright infringement. Wise claims protection under the fair use doc- trine. Who will prevail? Explain. (See Copyrights.)