Manufacturing Company Allegedly Infringes On Automotive Patent Technology

This case involves an intellectual property dispute between 2 automotive component manufacturing companies surrounding tire design for large commercial vehicles. The relevant patents covered pressure monitoring technology and automatic inflation systems for heavy trucks. It was alleged that the defendant company infringed on an industry veteran’s design, causing significant profit loss to the plaintiff. An expert in mechanical engineering with experience designing these tire systems was sought to examine and compare the two systems in question.

Question(s) For Expert Witness

1. Please describe your experience in the field of automotive systems engineering.

2. What is your experience working with automatic inflation and deflation systems for truck wheels?

3. Do you have a background in intellectual property cases? Please explain.

Expert Witness Response E-068567

I have a master's degree in engineering and have served the industry of medium and heavy mobile equipment and vehicles for 27 years. I have worked as a technician and technical instructor, and 10 years of my career have been spent as an engineer. My primary roles as engineer have been in reliability, test engineering, product safety, and project engineering for off-road and over-the-road heavy trucks and trailers. My experience in this area has been primarily as a reliability and test engineering for medium/heavy military vehicles with a central tire inflation system. I researched the root cause of failure of the system applied to vehicles during government testing. I also assisted in the instrumented testing, data acquisition, and data analysis during the development of a new wheel and central tire inflation system design to determine the causes of systemic leaks. I was the one to recommend design changes in these instances.