Global-tech's petition to the US Supreme Court is unlikely to succeed, said lawyers following the oral arguments in Global-Tech v SEB in late February. The case could change the standard for assessing whether a party induced patent infringement. Eight of the nine justices on the Court actively questioned counsel for both sides during the hearing, but seemed more concerned with defining the parameters of the proper standard for inducing patent infringement than with the facts of the case. Justice Stephen Breyer pleaded with SEB's counsel for help articulating a standard, while Justice John Roberts pointed out holes in Global-Tech's preferred test. "They were not getting the help they wanted," said Mark Davies of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe. "They seemed frustrated." However, all of the justices seemed sceptical of Global-Tech subsidiary Pentalpha's failure to reveal to its US lawyer that it reverse-engineered SEB's deep fryer in developing its own, and lawyers said the company is unlikely to win.
