21
This is a great question, with no one right answer.
The strength of a patent comes from the ability to enforce it. If the patent owner cannot enforce it for whatever reason (such as a lack of funding), the patent is effectively toothless.
But your competitors will likely not know that. They may therefore be dissuaded from infringing simply by the existence ...
12
My answer is yes, and I agree with Maca. I'll add that your ability to enforce it might change in the future.
I'm not implying that your situation is the same as mine, but consider this:
In my industry at my company, we basically lack the ability to enforce the patent as well, but the more patents we have that our very large competitors infringe or might ...
7
That's a good question. In general you can use Public PAIR to find out a lot of detailed information about issued patents and pending patent applications.
A good example is this is the touch screen patent by Steve Jobs: US7479949. The patent was subject to re-exam and all claims stand rejected in a non-final office action.
The '949 patent provides an ...
7
When filing a patent, the goal of the Independent Claim(s) is to define the invention as broadly as possible. Your goal is to obtain Freedom to Operate, with enough "white space" around your Preferred Embodiment that competitors cannot change minor details to avoid licensing your patent.
Dependent claims provide paths to multiple embodiments of your ...
6
What you are looking for is Freedom-to-Operate. There are quite a few articles written on this subject, and most of them deal with the inherent difficulty you describe. I've stitched together some excerpts from those articles, hopefully into a coherent meta-article:
Crouch, D. Facilitating Freedom-to-Operate Searches. Patently-O. September 17, 2010.
A ...
6
Yes.
The patent holder may sue for lost profits and/or reasonable royalties. Wikipedia sums it up well:
Under 35 U.S.C. § 284, a patent owner is entitled to "damages adequate to compensate for the infringement, but in no event less than a reasonable royalty."[9] Lost profits that result from infringement of their patent are also compensable.
Which by ...
5
Regarding the first question - will I be able to do anything about it since I filed for a patent in US and Canada first?
There is always scope for invalidating the patent granted in China. In order to invalidate the Chinese patent using your patent application, your application should have been published before the effective filing date of the Chinese patent....
5
You can't enforce a patent application. You can simply respond politely inviting him to bug off, or more usefully to let you know if a patent ever issues.
You can't file a patent application after someone else has published the invention in the US. So your website would count as prior art, as would the products you shipped, any documentation you published, ...
5
I concur with vallismortis's answer, but here are my views since I am a software / firmware developer too. What I have learnt over the years is not to go out looking for in your words "possible patent infringements" that "are buried in these hundred thousands lines of code." (search for "willful infringement" to understand my practice).
Here are three ...
5
If I understand your question, you had an invention and showed it to two different patent attorneys who each offered to patent it and take it to market and give you 15% percent or more of the profits. Patent attorney do not offer to take over peoples' inventions and pay them a royalty. It is against the code of ethics and, no matter how significant an ...
5
Lets say that someone creates an mobile app (Android/IOS) that is identical in function to a TI-85 calculator... in fact it is a perfect representation of it and identical in function and appearance of the interface (an "emulation") -- the only difference being that the user is interacting with a flat touch screen instead of physical buttons... and that the ...
4
George White nails all of the important points as usual.
US20120185456 is a Patent Application not a granted patent. Until and unless it is issued it does not prohibit you from doing anything. In some sense anyone can file a patent application which says anything. The patent which is allowed may be much narrower than what is described in the ...
4
Using PAIR, as Micah's detailed answer shows, is definitive and by far the best way to look things like this up.
Not definitive but easy, if it has what you are looking for, is Google patents. It keeps getting better and as of a few months ago has a "Legal Events" section at the end of some patent documents. In the case of the infamous:
Method of swinging ...
4
I think you've hit on a good point for those considering pursuing patents. Before investing large sums of money on patenting, it is important to figure out how you will identify infringement.
Often, product data sheets, technical specifications, user guides, administrator guides, white papers, case studies and/or other technical and marketing literature are ...
4
Patents are jurisdiction specific. Hence any patent filed in the U.S will protect your invention only in the U.S. Different countries follow their respective law set forth to be taken into consideration for granting a patent.
If you wish to seek patent protection for your invention in multiple countries then you can adopt the PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) ...
4
Perhaps it would be clearer by going back to first principles for patents.
The purpose of a claim is to set out certain things that others cannot do. Once a patent is granted, nobody else can do anything that is claimed. This is true regardless of the category of the claim (whether method, apparatus or whatever else).
It is therefore not correct to say ...
4
The typical approach is to perform a "freedom-to-operate" analysis. You can take a crack at this yourself using patent searching tools like Google Patents or my preference The Lens. Patent searching is a skill so I would advise starting with a broad search and when you find patents that are relevant (not necessarily the same idea, but with some similarities) ...
3
It is a good practice to include multiple independent claims of varying type (system, method, means etc) in a patent application. One should not restrict the invention by claiming it in only one form. It is advisable to claim an invention in multiple forms in order to ensure the broadest possible protection.
To determine infringement of a patent by a ...
3
First i want to answer your question related to publishing as a technical paper before applying for a patent.
In USPTO, prior art exception are made by the US Patent Law under the AIA 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(1)(A) for novelty AIA 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1). These exceptions limit the use of an inventor's own work as prior art, when the inventor's own work has been ...
3
This article is worth looking at.
"The PTAB found that (i) the claimed method is directed to a set of rules for conducting a wagering game, which is a patent-ineligible abstract idea, and (ii) the manipulations of the deck of cards (e.g., shuffling, dealing) are conventional steps in playing a wagering game that do not add enough to the claims to transform ...
3
I certainly cannot speak to why a particular company chooses one form of intellectual property protection over another, but trade secret law has a few limitations. First, a trade secret is protected only against misappropriation (e.g., acquisition through improper means or breach of confidence). Therefore, a trade secret provides no protection against ...
3
The claims section of a patent document describes in detail, the scope of protection granted to a patent.
A claim is said to be infringed if all the elements of the claim exists in your product. Similarly, a claim that includes process steps is said to be infringed, if all the process steps are present in the process that you intend to follow.
In other ...
3
Consider an example, a patented software invention in the United States covering a “improving the financial transaction” method and system. A competitor enables users in the United States to download an application onto a mobile device. The user accesses the application to browse through products. The activity of the user is sent to a server located in India....
3
In India, form 5 (declaration as to inventorship) has to be filed by the applicant(s) stating that they are the true and first inventor(s). Additional inventor(s) whose name is not mentioned in the application has to give an approval to pursue the complete specification of the stated application.
Only the assignee or the licensee of the patent can exercise ...
3
The software development company may consider the following options in the same order mentioned below:
Patent infringement analysis
Invalidation
Product re-engineering
Patent infringement analysis:
In patent law, it is the "claims" that defines the metes and bounds of an invention. In other words, claims define the scope of patent right.Infringement ...
3
I would like to make this item [...]. Is this legal?
No. Even for personal use, it would be patent infringement.
Are you sure, however, that your implementation would be doing everything in Claim 1? To me, Claim 1 seems ridiculously specific. It should be very easy to avoid infringement by not implementing some of the more esoteric recitations in Claim 1.
3
As starter, you can not avoid the risk of infringing a patent without checking any "innovation" potential. You might go over some "old" patents to find what is available. You might also look at some prior art. You may also try to patent your idea by creating an independent claim that uses part of potential infringement.
To be safe you might need to confine ...
3
If you have the money to enforce it, a patent allows you to block other people from making, using, or selling your invention without getting a license from you. Revealing your invention is a requirement to get the patent.
If you copyright your code, this is almost worthless as another programmer could pretty simply program around your copyright. You would ...
3
A patent grants you a negative right. That is, it gives you the ability to stop other people from doing something, not to do it yourself.
There are a few times when that's relevant, like if you invent a new way of unlocking car doors, you aren't then allowed to steal cars, or as in your case, if you invent something that improves on something else, you aren'...
3
You cannot take any action until your patent has been granted.
By 'knock-off' do you mean the idea was stolen from you? Did they start manufacturing after your patent 'priority date'?
If you applied for a provisional patent (and linked your patent application to provisional), did they start manufacturing after the priority date of this provisional patent?
...
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