Protecting Yourself and Your Company
Book Details
Author(s)Ernest Linek
PublisherExecSense
ISBN / ASINB00936Z39K
ISBN-13978B00936Z398
Sales Rank99,999,999
MarketplaceUnited States 🇺🇸
Description
Patent protection is the most expensive form of IP protection available. Patents are issued on a country by country basis and are enforceable only where they have been granted. In other words, U.S. Patents are enforceable only in the United States; Japanese patents are enforceable only in Japan, etc. There is no “world patent.†There is a filing system that allows one application to be created and searched and then filed in up to 146 member countries - and that is the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
A PCT application is just that – an application. It never becomes a granted patent except when it is further processed in the individual countries the applicant selects. In late 2011, the American Invents Act (AIA) greatly changed patent law in the United States. One major change was the adoption of a “first-inventor-to-file†provision which converted the United States from a "first-to-invent" to a "first-to-file" system, similar to other patent laws around the world.
A patent is a grant from the government which gives the owner a “limited monopoly†over the invention disclosed and claimed in the patent document. In exchange for a full and detailed written disclosure of the invention, the patent gives the owner the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, importing, or exporting the invention.
The term of a U.S. patent, as well as most foreign patents, is twenty years from the filing date of the application. Someone owning a patent does not give that person the automatic right to make, use, or sell the invention in the United States. Someone may have superior rights over your invention. That’s why IP lawyers urge their client to obtain clearance searches and clearance opinions to obtain “freedom to operate†assurance. Patent infringement does not require knowledge of another party’s patent. Willful patent infringement does require such knowledge, and this type of infringement can lead to treble (3X) damage awards from a federal court.
A PCT application is just that – an application. It never becomes a granted patent except when it is further processed in the individual countries the applicant selects. In late 2011, the American Invents Act (AIA) greatly changed patent law in the United States. One major change was the adoption of a “first-inventor-to-file†provision which converted the United States from a "first-to-invent" to a "first-to-file" system, similar to other patent laws around the world.
A patent is a grant from the government which gives the owner a “limited monopoly†over the invention disclosed and claimed in the patent document. In exchange for a full and detailed written disclosure of the invention, the patent gives the owner the right to exclude others from making, using, selling, offering to sell, importing, or exporting the invention.
The term of a U.S. patent, as well as most foreign patents, is twenty years from the filing date of the application. Someone owning a patent does not give that person the automatic right to make, use, or sell the invention in the United States. Someone may have superior rights over your invention. That’s why IP lawyers urge their client to obtain clearance searches and clearance opinions to obtain “freedom to operate†assurance. Patent infringement does not require knowledge of another party’s patent. Willful patent infringement does require such knowledge, and this type of infringement can lead to treble (3X) damage awards from a federal court.
