"The doctrine of equivalents has been accepted in the jurisprudence to protect patent rights from being infringed by infringers." Elucidate the statement.

Patent infringement generally falls into two categories: literal infringement and infringement under the doctrine of equivalents. The term "literal infringement" means that each and every element recited in a claim has identical correspondence in the allegedly infringing device or process. However, even if there is no literal infringement, a claim may be infringed under the doctrine of equivalents if some other element of the accused device or process performs substantially the same function, in substantially the same way, to achieve substantially the same result. The doctrine of equivalents is a legal rule in most of the world's patent systems that allows a Court to hold a party liable for patent infringement even though the infringing device or process does not fall within the literal scope of a patent claim, but nevertheless is equivalent to the claimed invention. This "expansion" of claim coverage permitted by the doctrine of equivalents, however, is not unbounded. Instead, the scope of coverage which is afforded to the patent owner is limited by (i) the doctrine of "prosecution history estoppel" and (ii) the prior art. An infringement analysis determines whether a claim in a patent literally "reads on" an accused infringer's device or process, or covers the allegedly infringing device under the doctrine of equivalents. The steps in the analysis are: Construe the scope of the "literal" language of the claims. Compare the claims, as properly construed, with the accused device or process, to determine whether there is literal infringement. If there is no literal infringement, construe the scope of the claims under the doctrine of equivalents.